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GEORGIAN POETRY 



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GEORGIAN 
POETRY 

1913-1915 



a 
a £1 





NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

LONDON: THE POETRY BOOKSHOP 

1916 






IN MEMORIAM 

R. B. 

J. E. F. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

THE objedl of Georgian Poetry 1911-1912 was to 
give a convenient survey of the work published 
within two years by some poets of the newer genera- 
tion. The book was welcomed; and perhaps, even in a 
time like this, those whom it interested may care to 
have a corresponding volume for the three years which 
have since passed. 

Two of the poets — I think the youngest, and cer- 
tainly not the least gifted — are dead. Rupert Brooke, 
who seemed to have everything that is worth having, 
died last April in the service of his country. James Elroy 
Flecker, to whom life and death were less generous, 
died in January after a long and disabling illness. 

A few of the contributors to the former volume are 
not represented in this one, either because they have 
published nothing which comes within its scope, or 
because they belong in fact to an earlier poetic genera- 
tion, and their inclusion must be allov/ed to have been 
an anachronism. Two names are added. 

The alphabetical arrangement of the writers has been 
modified in order to recognize the honour which Mr 
Gordon Bottomley has done to the book by allowing 
his play to be first published here. 

My thanks for permission to print the poems are due 
to Messrs Constable, Duckworth, Heinemann, Herbert 
Jenkins, Macmillan, Elkin Mathews, Methuen, Martin 
Seeker, and Sidgwick and Jackson; and to the Editors 
of the English Remeiu, Flying Fame, New Numbers, the 
Ne-zv Statesman, and the Westminster Gazette. 

E. M. 

oa. 1915.' 



CONTENTS 



GORDON BOTTOMLEY 

King Lear's Wife 



RUPERT BROOKE 










Tiare Tahiti 


(from ' 


1914J 


md Other Poems ') 


51 


The Great Lover 








54 


Beauty and 


Beauty 








57 


Heaven 










58 


Clouds 










59 


Sonnet 










60 


The Soldier 










61 



WILLL4M H. DAVIES 

Thunderstorms (from * Foliage ') 

The Mind's Liberty (from 'The Bird of 



65 





Paradise ') 


66 


The Moon 

When on a Summer's Morn ,, 


67 
68 


A Great Time 


5? ?> J? 


69 


The Hawk 


?? T1 3> 


70 


Sweet Stay-at-Home (from ' Foliage ') 

A Fleeting Passion (from ' The Bird of 


71 




Paradise ') 


72 


The Bird of Paradise 




73 


^ALTER DE LA MARE 






Music 

Wanderers (from ' 


Peacock Pie ') 


77 
78 


Melmillo „ 
Alexander 


>j jj 


79 
80 


The Mocking Fairy „ 
Full Moon „ 




81 
82 


Off the Ground „ 


?? ?> 


83 



^ 



./ 



JOHN DRINKWATER 

A Town Window (from ' Swords and Plough- 
shares ') 89 
OfGreatham ,, ,, „ 90 

The Carver in Stone ,, „ „ 92 

JAMES ELROY FLECKER 

The Old Ships 105 

A Fragment (from ' The Old Ships ') 106 

Santorin (from ' The Golden Journey to 

Samarkand') 107 

Yasmin „ ,, ,. 109 

Gates of Damascus „ ,, ., no 

The Dying Patriot ,, ,,, ,, 115 

WILFRID WILSON GIBSON y 

The Gorse (from ' Thoroughfares ') 119 

Hoops (from * Borderlands ') 121 

The Going 1 34 

RALPH HODGSON 

The Bull 137 

The Song of Honour 143 

D. H. LAWRENCE 

Service of all the Dead 153 

Meeting among the Mountains 1 54 

Cruelty and Love (from * Love Poems and 

Others') 156 

FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 

The Wife of Llew (from ' Songs of the Fields ') 161 
A Rainy Day in April ,, ,, ,, 162 

The Lost Ones ., „ ., 16^ 



JOHN IvIASEFIELD 

The Wanderer (from ^ Philip the King ') 167 

HAROLD MONRO 

Milk for the Cat (from ' Children of Love ') 1 79 

Overheard on a Saltmarsh „ ,, 181 

Children of Love 182 

JAMES STEPHENS 

The Rivals (from ' Songs from the Clay *) 187 

TheGoatpaths „ „ „ 188 

The Snare „ „ ,, 190 

In Woods and Meadows ,, ,, 191 

Deirdre „ „ „ 192 

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 

The End of the World 195 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 241 



GORDON BOTTOMLEY 



KING LEAR'S WIFE Gordon 

(To T. 5. M.) Bottomley 

DRAMATIS PERSON A E 
LEAR, King oj Britain. 
HTGD, his Queen. 
GONERIL, daughter to King Lear. 
CORDEIL, daughter to King Lear. 
GORMELAITH, waiting-woman to Queen Hygd. 
AIERRTN, waiting-woman to Queen Hygd. 
A PHTSICIAN. 
TWO ELDERLT WOMEN. 

KING LEAR'S WIFE. 

The scene is a bedchamber in a one-storied house. 
The walls consist oj a jew courses oj huge irregular 
boulders roughly squared and jitted together; a 
thatched roof rises steeply jrom the back wall. In 
the centre oj the back wall is a doorway opening 
on a garden and covered by two leather curtainj, 
the chamber is partially hung with similar 
hangings stitched with bright wools. There is a 
small window on each side of this door. 

Toward the jront a bed stands with its head 
against the right wall; it has thin leather curtains 
hung by thongs and drawn back. Farther jorward 
a rich robe and a crown hang on a peg in the same 
wall. There is a second door beyond the bed, and 
between this and the bed^s head stands a small 
table with a broiize lamp and a bronze cup on it. 
Queen HTGD, an emaciated woman, is asleep 
in the bed; her plenteous black hair^ veined with 
silver, spreads over the pilloiv. Her waiting- 
woman, MERRTN, middle-aged and hard- 

3 



Gordon jeatured, sits zvatching her in a chair on the 

Bottomley jarther side oj the bed. The light of early morning 

fills the room. 

Merryn 

Many, many must die who long to live, 

Yet this one cannot die who longs to die : 

Even her sleep, come now at last, thwarts death, 

Although sleep lures us all half way to death. . . . 

I could not sit beside her every night 

If I believed that I might suffer so: 

I am sure I am not made to be diseased, 

I feel there is no maladv can touch me — 

Save the red cancer, growing where it will. 

Shaking her heads from- her girdle, ihe 
kneels at the foot of the bed. 

O sweet Saint Cleer, and sweet Saint Elid too. 
Shield me from rooting cancers and from madness : 
Shield me from sudden death, worse than two 

death-beds ; 
Let me not lie like this unwanted queen. 
Yet let my time come not ere I am ready — 
Grant space enow to relish the watchers' tears 
And give my clothes away and calm my features 
And streek my limbs according to my will. 
Not the hard will of fumbling corpse- washers. 
[She prays silently. 

KING LEAR, a great, golden-bearded huhl 
in thejull maturity oj life, enters abruptly 
by the door beyond the bed, followed by the 
PHYSICIAN. 
Lear 

Why are you here? Are you here for ever? 
Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is she? 



Merryn GordoQ 

O, Sire, move softly ; the Queen sleeps at last. Bottomley 

Lear {continuing in an undertone) 

Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is 

Gormflaith? 
It is her watch. ... I know; I have marked your 

hours. 
Did the Queen send her away.? Did the Queen 
Bid you stay near her in her hate of Gormflaith.? 
You work upon her yeasting brain to think 
That she's not safe except when you crouch near her 
To spy with your dropt eyes and soundless 

presence. 

Merryn 

Sire, midnight should have ended Gormflaith's 

watch. 
But Gormflaith had another kind of will 
And ended at a godlier hour by slumber, 
A letter in her hand, the night-lamp out. 
She loitered in the hall when she should sleep. 
My duty has two hours ere she returns. 

Lear 

The Queen should have young women about her 

bed. 
Fresh cool-breathed women to lie down at her side 
And plenish her with vigour; for sick or wasted 

women 
Can draw a virtue from such abounding presence. 
When night makes life unwary and looses the 

strings of being, 
Even by the breath, and most of all by sleep. 
Her slumber was then no fault : go you and find her. 



Gordon Physician 

Bottomley It is not strange that a bought watcher drowses ; 
What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps 
Who w^ould not sleep for all my draughts of sleep 
In the last days. When did this change appear? 

Merryn 

We shall not know — it came while Gormflaith 

nodded. 
When I awoke her and she saw the Queen 
She could not speak for fear: 
When the rekindling lamp showed certainly 
The bed-clothes stirring about our lady's neck, 
She knew there was no death, she breathed, she 

said 
She had not slept until her mistress slept 
And lulled her; but I asked her how her mistress 
Slept, and her utterance faded. 
She should be blamed wdth rods, as I was blamed 
For slumber, after a day and a night of watching, 
By the Queen's child-bed, twenty years ago. 

Lear 

She does what she must do : let her alone. 

I know her watch is now : get gone and send her. 

[MERRTN goes out by the door beyond the 
bed. 
Is it a portent now to sleep at night? 
What change is here? What see you in the Queen ? 
Can you discern how this disease vyill end? 

Physician 

Surmise might spring and healing follow yet, 
If I could find a trouble that could heal ; 

6 



But these strong inward pains that keep her Gordon 
ebbing Bottomley 

Have not their source in perishing flesh. 

I have seen women creep into their beds 

And sink with this bUnd pain because they 
nursed 

Some bitterness or burden in the mind 

That drew the Hfe, sucklings too long at breast. 

Do you know such a cause in this poor lady.? 

Lear 

There is no cause. How should there be a cause.? 

Physician 

We cannot die wholly against our wills ; 
And in the texture of women I have found 
Harder determination than in men : 
The body grows impatient of enduring, 
The harried mind is from the body estranged, 
And we consent to go : by the Queen's touch. 
The way she moves — or does not move — in bed, 
The eyes so cold and keen in her white mask, 
I know she has consented. 
The snarling look of a mute wounded hawk. 
That would be let alone, is always hers — 
Yet she was sorely tender: it may be 
Some wound in her affection will not heal. 
We should be careful — the mind can so be hurt 
That nought can make it be unhurt again. 
Where, then, did her affection most persist? 

Lear 

Old bone-patcher, old digger in men's flesh, 
Doctors are ever itching to be priests, 
Meddling in conduct, natures, life's privacies. 



Gordon We have been coupled now for twenty years, 

Bottomley And she has never turned from me an hour — 
She knows a woman's duty and a queen's : 
Whose, then, can her affection be but mine? 
How can I hurt her — she is still my queen? 
If her strong inward pain is a real pain 
Find me some certain drug to medicine it : 
When common beings have decayed past help. 
There must be still some drug for a king to use; 
For nothing ought to be denied to kings. 

Physician 
For the mere anguish there is such a potion. 
The gum of warpy juniper shoots is seethed 
With the torn marrow of an adder's spine; 
An unflawed emerald is pashed to dust 
And mingled there; that broth must cool in 

moonlight. 
I have indeed attempted this already. 
But the poor emeralds I could extort 
From wry-mouthed earls' women had no force. 
In two more dawns it will be late for potions. . . . 
There are not many emeralds in Britain, 
And there is none for vividness and strength 
Like the great stone that hangs upon your breast : 
If you will waste it for her she shall be holpen. 

Lear {with rising voice) 

Shatter my emerald? My emerald? My emerald? 

A High King of Eire gave it to his daughter 

Who mothered generations of us, the kings of 

Britain; 
It has a spiritual influence; its heart 
Burns when it sees the sun. . . . Shatter my 

emerald ! 



Only the fungused brain and carious mouth Gordon 

Of senile things could shape such thought. . . . Bottomley 
My emerald ! 

HTGD stirs uneasily in her sleep. 

Physician 

Speak lower, low; for your good fame, speak low — 
If she should waken thus. . . . 

Lear There is no wise man 

Believes that medicine is in a jewel. 
It is enough that you have failed with one. 
Seek you a common stone. I'll not do it. 
Let her eat heartily : she is spent with fasting. 
Let her stand up and walk : she is so still 
Her blood can never nourish her. Come away. 

Physician 

I must not leave her ere the woman comes — 
Or will some other woman. . . . 

Lear No, no, no, no; 

The Queen is not herself; she speaks without 

sense; 
Only Merryn and Gormflaith understand. 
She is better quiet. Come. . . . 

\He urges the PHTSICIAN roughly azvay 
by the shoulder. 

My emerald ! 
[He Jollows the PHTSICIAN out by the 
door at the back. Queen HTGD awakes 
at his last noisy words as he disappears. 

Hygd 

I have not slept; I did but close mine eyes 



Gordon A little while — a little while forgetting. . . . 

Bottomley Where are you, Merryn? . . . Ah, it is not 
Merryn. . . . 
Bring me the cup of whey, woman; I thirst. . . . 
Will you speak to me if I say your name? 
Will you not listen, Gormflaith? . . . Can you 

hear? 
I am very thirsty — let me drink. . . . 
Ah, wicked woman, why did I speak to you ? 
I will not be your suppliant again. . . . 
Where are you? O, where are you? . . . Where 
are you ? 

[She tries to raise herself to look about the 

room, but sinks back helplessly. 
The curtains oj the door at the back are 
farted, and GONERIL appears in 
hunting dress, — her kirtle caught up 
in her girdle, a light spear over her 
shoulder — stands there a moment, then 
enters noiselessly and approaches the 
bed. She is a girl just turning to woman- 
hood, proud in her poise, swijt and cold, 
an almost gleaming presence, a virgin 
huntress. 
Goneril 

Mother, were you calling? 

Have I awakened you? 

They said that you were sleeping. 

Why are you left alone, mother, my dear one? 

Hygd 

Who are you ? No, no, no ! Stand farther off! 

You pulse and glow; you are too vital; your 

presence hurts. . . . 
Freshness of hill-swards, wind and trodden ling, 

10 



I should have known that Goneril stands here. Gordon 
It is yet dawn, but you have been afoot Bottomley 

Afar and long : where could you climb so soon? 

Goneril 

Dearest, I am an evil daughter to you : 
I never thought of you — O, never once — 
Until I heard a moor-bird cry like you. 
I am wicked, rapt in joys of breath and life, 
And I must force myself to think of you. 
I leave you to caretakers' cold gentleness; 
But O, I did not think that they dare leave you. 
What woman should be here? 

Hygd I have forgot. . . . 

I know not. . . . She will be about some duty. 
I do not matter: my time is done . . . nigh 

done . . . 
Bought hands can well prepare me for a grave, 
And all the generations must serve youth. 
My girls shall live untroubled while they may. 
And learn happiness once while yet blind men 
Have injured not their freedom ; 
For women are not meant for happiness. 
Where have you been, my falcon ? 

Goneril 

I dreamt that I was swimming, shoulder up, 
And drave the bed-clothes spreading to the floor : 
Coldness awoke me; through the waning darkness 
I heard far hounds give shivering aery tongue, 
Remote, withdrawing, suddenly faint and near; 
I leapt and saw a pack of stretching weasels 
Hunt a pale coney in a soundless rush. 
Their elfin and thin yelping pierced my heart 

II 



Gordon As with an unseen beauty long awaited ; 

Bottomley Wolf-skin and cloak I buckled over this night-gear, 
And took my honoured spear from my bed-side 
Where none but I may touch its purity, 
And sped as lightly down the dewy bank 
As any mothy owl that hunts quick mice. 
They went crying, crying, but I lost them 
Before I stept, with the first tips of light. 
On Raven Crag near by the Druid Stones ; 
So I paused there and, stooping, pressed my hand 
Against the stony bed of the clear stream; 
Then entered I the circle and raised up 
My shining hand in cold stern adoration 
Even as the first great gleam went up the sky. 

Hygd 

Ay, you do well to worship on that height : 
Life is free to the quick up in the wind, 
And the wind bares you for a god's descent — 
For wind is a spirit immediate and aged. 
And you do well to worship harsh men-gods, 
God Wind and Those who built his Stones with 

him: 
All gods are cruel, bitter, and to be bribed. 
But women-gods are mean and cunning as well. 
That fierce old virgin, Cornish Merryn, prays 
To a young woman, yes and even a virgin — 
The poorest kind of woman — and she says 
That is to be a Christian : avoid then 
Her worship most, for men hate such denials, 
And any woman scorns her unwed daughter. 
Where sped you from that height? Did Regan 

join you there? 

Goneril 
Does Regan worship anywhere at dawn? 

12 



The sweaty half-clad cook-maids render lard Gordon 

Out in the scullery, after pig-killing, Bottomley 

And Regan sidles among their greasy skirts, 

Smeary and hot as they, for craps to suck. 

I lost my thoughts before the giant Stones . . • 

And when anew the earth assembled round me 

I swung out on the heath and woke a hare 

And speared it at a cast and shouldered it, 

Startled another drinking at a tarn 

And speared it ere it leapt; so steady and clear 

Had the god in his fastness made my mind. 

Then, as I took those dead things in my hands, 

I felt shame light my face from deep within, 

And loathing and contempt shake in my bowels, 

That such unclean coarse blows from me had issued 

To crush delicate things to bloody mash 

And blemish their fur when I would only kill. 

My gladness left me ; I careered no more 

Upon the morning; I went down from there 

With empty hands : 

But under the first trees and without thought 

I stole on conies at play and stooped at one; 

I hunted it, I caught it up to me 

As I outsprang it, and with this thin knife 

Pierced it from eye to eye; and it was dead, 

Untorn, unsullied, and with flawless fur. 

Then my untroubled mind came back to me. 

Hygd 

Leap down the glades with a fawn's ignorance; 

Live you your fill of a harsh purity; 

Be wild and calm and lonely while you may. 

These are your nature's joys, and it is human 

Only to recognise our natures' joys 

When we are losing them for ever. 

13 



Gordon Gofteril But why 

Bottomley Do you say this to me with a sore heart ? 

You are a queen, and speak from the top of Hfe, 
And when you choose to wish for others' joys 
Those others must have woe. 

Hygd 

The hour comes for you to turn to a man 
And give yourself with the high heart of youth 
More lavishly than a queen gives anything. 
But when a woman gives herself 
She must give herself for ever and have faith; 
For woman is a thing of a season of years, 
She is an early fruit that will not keep, 
She can be drained and as a husk survive 
To hope for reverence for what has been; 
While man renews himself into old age. 
And gives himself according to his need. 
And women more unborn than his next child 
May take him yet with youth 
And lose him with their potence. 

Goneril 

But women need not wed these men. 

Hygd 

We are good human currency, like gold. 

For men to pass among them when they choose. 

[A chiWs hands beat on the outside of the 
door beyond the bed. 

CordeiVs Voice {a child's voice, outside) 

Father. . . . Father. . . . Father. . . . Are 

you here? 
Merryn, ugly Merryn, let me in. . . . 

H 



I know my father is here. ... I want him. . . . -- Oordon 

Now. . . . ^-. Bottomley 

Mother, chide Merryn, she is old and slow. . . . 

Hygd (softly) 

My little curse. Send her away — away. . . . 

CordeWs Voice 

Father. . . . O, father, father. ... I want my 
father. 

Goneril {ope^iing the door a little way) 
Hush; hush — you hurt your mother with your 

voice. 
You cannot come in, Cordeil; you must go away: 
Your father is not here. . . . 

CordeiPs Voice He must be here : 

He is not in his chamber or the hall, 
He is not in the stable or with Gormflaith : 
He promised I should ride with him at dawn 
And sit before his saddle and hold his hawk. 
And ride with him and ride to the heron-marsh; 
He said that he would give me the first heron, 
And hang the longest feathers in my hair. 

Goneril 

Then you must haste to find him ; 
He may be riding now. . . . 

CordeiVs Voice 

But Gerda said she saw him enter here. 

Go7ieril 

Indeed, he is not here. . . . 

IS 



Gordon CordeiVs Voice Let me look. . . . 

Bottomley 

Goneril 

You are too noisy. Must I make you go.? 

CordeiFs Voice 

Mother, Goneril is unkind to me. 

Hygd {raising herself i?i bed excitedly^ and speaking so 
vehemently that her utterance strangles itself) 
Go, go, thou evil child, thou ill-comer. 

[GONERIL, with a sudden strong move- 
ment, shuts the resisting door and holds it 
rigidly. The little hands heat on it 
madly jor a moment, then the child^s 
voice is heard in a retreating wail, 

Goneril 
Though she is wilful, obeying only the King, 
She is a very little child, mother, 
To be so bitterly thought of. 

Hygd 

Because a woman gives herself for ever 
Cordeil the useless had to be conceived 
(Like an after-thought that deceives nobody) 
To keep her father from another woman. 
And I lie here. 

Goneril (after a silence) 

Hard and unjust my father has been to me; 
Yet that has knitted up within my mind 
A love of coldness and a love of him 
Who makes me firm, wary, swift and secret. 
Until I feel if I become a mother 

i6 



I shall at need be cruel to my children, Gordon 

And ever cold, to string their natures harder Bottomley 

And make them able to endure men's deeds; 

But now I wonder if injustice 

Keeps house with baseness, taught by kinship — 

I never thought a king could be untrue, 

I never thought my father was unclean. . . . 

mother, mother, what is it? Is this dying? 

Hygd ^ 

1 think I am only faint. . . . 
Give me the cup of whey. . . . 

[GONERIL takes the cup and, supporting 
HTGD, lets her drink. 

Goneril 
There is too little here. When was it made? 



Hygd 

Yester-eve. . . . Yester-morn. . 



Goneril Unhappy mother, 

You have no daughter to take thought for you — 
No servant's love to shame a daughter with. 
Though I am shamed — you must have other food, 
Straightway I bring you meat. . . . 

Hygd It is no use. . . . 

Plenish the cup for me. . . . Not now, not now. 
But in a while ; for I am heavy now. . . . 
Old Wynoc's potions loiter in my veins, 
And tides of heaviness pour over me 
Each time I wake and think. I could sleep now. 

17 



Gordon Goneril 

Bottomley Then I shall lull you, as you once lulled me. 

[Seating herself on the bed, she sings. 

The owlets in roof-holes 

Can sing for themselves ; 

The smallest brown squirrel 

Both scampers and delves; 

But a baby does nothing — 

She never knows how — 

She must hark to her mother 

Who sings to her now. 

Sleep then, ladykin, peeping so; 

Hide your handles and ley lei lo. 

[She bends over HTGD and kisses her; 
they laugh sojtly together. LEAR parts 
the curtains oj the door at the back, stands 
there a moment, then goes away noiselessly. 

The lish baby otter 

Is sleeky and streaming, 

With catching bright fishes 

Ere babies learn dreaming; 

But no wet little otter 

Is ever so warm 

As the fleecy-wrapt baby 

'Twixt me and my arm. 

Sleep big mousie. . . . 

Hygd {suddenly irritable) 

Be quiet. ... I cannot bear it. 

[She turns her head away from GONERIL 
and closes her eyes. 

Js GONERIL watches her in silence 
GORMFLAHH enters by the door 
beyond the bed. She is young aiid tall and 

i8 



jresh-coloured; her red hair coils and crisps Gordon 
close to her little head, showing its shape, Bottomley 
Her movements are sojt and unhurried; 
her manner is quiet and ingratiating and a 
little too agreeable; she speaks a little too 
gently, 

Goneril {meeting her near the door and speaking in a 

low voice) 
Why did you leave the Queen? Where have you 

been? 
Why have you so neglected this grave duty? 

Gormflaith 
This is the instant of my duty, Princess : 
From midnight until now was Merryn's watch. 
I thought to find her here : is she not here? 

\HTGD turns to look at the speakers; then, 
turning hack, closes her eyes again and 
lies as ij asleep. 

Goneril 

I found the Queen alone. I heard her cry your name. 

Gormflaith 

Your anger is not too great, Madam ; I grieve 
That one so old as Merryn should act thus — 
So old and trusted and favoured, and so callous. 

Goneril 
The Queen has had no food since yester-night. 

Gormflaith 

Madam, that is too monstrous to conceive : 
I will seek food. I will prepare it now. 

19 



Gordon Goneril 

Bottomley Sta^ here : and know, if the Queen is left again, 
You shall be beaten with two rods at once. 

[She picks up the cup and goes out by the 

door beyond the bed. 
GORMFLAHH turns the chair a little 
away jrom the bed so that she can watch 
the jar door, and, seating herself, draws a 
letter Jrom her bosom. 

Gormflaith {to herself, reading) 

" Open your window when the moon is dead, 

And I will come again. 

The men say everywhere that you are faithless, 

The women say your face is a false face 

And your eyes shifty eyes. Ah, but I love you 

Gormflaith. 
Do not forget your window-latch to-night. 
For when the moon is dead the house is still." 

\LEAR again parts the door-curtains at the 
back, and, seeing GORMFLAHH, en- 
ters. At the first slight rustle oj the 
curtains GORMFLAHH stealthily 
slips the letter hack into her bosom bejore 
turning gradually, a finger to her lips, 
to see who approaches her. 

Lear {leaning over the side oj her chair) 
Lady, what do you read? 

Gormfiaith I read a letter. Sire. 

Lear 

A letter — a letter — what read you in a letter? 

20 



Gorviflaith {taking another letter from her girdle) Gordon 

Your words to me — my lonely joy your words. . . . Bottomley 
" If you are steady and true as your gaze " — 

Lear {tearing the letter jrom her^ crumpling it, and 
flinging it to the back of the room) 

Pest! 
You should not carry a king's letters about, 
Nor hoard a king's letters. 

Gormflaith No, Sire. 

Lear 

Must the King also stand in the presence now? 

Gormflaith {rising) 

Pardon my troubled mind; you have taken my 
letter from me. 

[LEAR seats himself and takes GORM- 
FLAHH'Shand. 

Gormflaith 
Wait, wait — I might be seen. The Queen may 
waken yet. 

[Stepping lightly to the bed, she noiselessly 
slips the curtain on that side as Jar forward 
as it will come, Then she returns to LEAR, 
who draws her to him and seats her on his 
knee. 
Lear 

You have been long in coming : 
Was Merryn long in finding you ? 

Gormflaith {^laying with Leafs emerald) 

Did Merryn. . . . 
Has Merryn been. . . . She loitered long before 
she came, 

21 



For I was at the women's bathing-place ere 

dawn. . . . 
No jewel in all the land excites me and enthralls 
Like this strong source of light that lives upon 

your breast. 

Lear {taking the jewel chain Jrom his neck and 
slipping it over Gorrnflaith'' s head while she 
still holds the emerald) 
Wear it within your breast to fill the gentle place 
That cherished the poor letter lately torn from 
you. 

Gorrnflaith 

Did Merryn at your bidding, then, forsake her 
Queen? 

[LEAR nods. 

You must not, ah, you must not do these master- 
ful things. 

Even to grasp a precious meeting for us two ; 

For the reproach and chiding are so hard to me. 

And even you can never fight the silent women 

In hidden league against me, all this house of 
women. 

Merryn has left her Queen in unwatched lone- 
liness. 

And yet your daughter Princess Goneril has said 

(With lips that scarce held back the spittle for my 
face) 

That if the Queen is left again I shall be whipt. 

Lear 

Children speak of the punishments they know. 
Her back is now not half so white as yours. 
And you shall write your will upon it yet. 

22 



Gorniflaith Gordon 

Ah, no, my King, my faithful. . Ah, no. . no . . Bottomley 
The Princess Goneril is right ; she judges me : 
A sinful woman cannot steadily gaze reply 
To the cool, baffling looks of virgin untried force. 
She stands beside that crumbling mother in her 

hate. 
And, though we know so well — she and I, O we 

know — 
That she could love no mother nor partake in 

anguish. 
Yet she is flouted when the King forsakes her dam. 
She must protect her very flesh, her tenderer 

flesh, 
Although she cannot wince ; she's wild in her cold 

brain, 
And soon I must be made to pay a cruel price 
For this one gloomy joy in my uncherished life. 
Envy and greed are watching me aloof 
(Yes, now none of the women will walk with me). 
Longing to see me ruined, but she'll do it. . . . 
It is a lonely thing to love a king. . . . 

[She puts her cheek gradually closer and 
close to LEARNS cheek as she speaks: 
at length he kisses her suddenly and 
vehemently, as if he would grasp her lips 
with his: she receives it passively, her 
head thrown back, her eyes closed, 

Lear 

Goldilocks, when the crown is couching in your 

hair 
And those two mingled golds brighten each 

other's wonder, 
You shall produce a son from flesh unused — 

2S 



Gordon Virgin I chose you for that, first crops are 

Bottomley strongest — 

A tawny fox with your high-stepping action, 
With your untiring power and glittering eyes, 
To hold my lands together when I am done, 
To keep my lands from crumbling into mouthfuls 
For the short jaws of my three mewling vixens. 
Hatch for me such a youngster from my seed. 
And I and he shall rein my hot-breathed wenches 
To let you grind the edges off their teeth. 

Gorfnflaith (shaking her head sadly) 

Life holds no more than this for me; this is my 

hour. 
When she is dead I know you'll buy another 

Queen — 
Giving a county for her, gaining a duchy with 

her — 
And put me to wet nursing, leashing me with the 

thralls. 
It will not be unbearable — I've had your love. 
Master and friend, grant then this hour to me : 
Never again, maybe, can we two sit 
At love together, unwatched, unknown of all. 
In the Queen's chamber, near the Queen's crown 
And with no conscious Queen to hold it from us : 
Now let me wear the Queen's true crown on me 
And snatch a breathless knowledge of the feeling 
Of what it would have been to sit by you 
Always and closely, equal and exalted. 
To be my light when life is dark again. 

Lear 

Girl, by the black stone god, I did not think 
You had the nature of a chambermaid, 

H 



Who pries and fumbles in her lady's clothes Gordon 

With her red hands, or on her soily neck Bottomley 

Stealthily hangs her lady's jewels or pearls. 

You shall be tiring-maid to the next queen 

And try her crown on every day o' your life 

In secrecy, if that is your desire : 

If you would be a queen, cleanse yourself quickly 

Of menial fingering and servile thought. 

Gormflaith 
You need not crown me. Let me put it on 
As briefly as a gleam of Winter sun. 
I will not even warm it with my hair. 

Lear 
You cannot have the nature of a queen 
If you believe that there are things above you : 
Crowns make no queens, queens are the cause of 
crowns. 

Gormflaitb (slippingfrom his knee) 
Then I will take one. Look. 

\She tip'toes lightly round the front oj the 
bed to zvhere the crown hangs on the wall. 

Lear 
Come here, mad thing — come back! 
Your shadow will wake the Queen. 

Gormflaith 

Hush, hush ! That angry voice 
Will surely wake the Queen. 

[She lifts the crown from the peg, and returns 
with it. 

25 



Gordon Lear 

Bottomley Go back ; bear back the crown : 

Hang up the crown again. 

We are not helpless serfs 

To think things are forbidden 

And steal them for our joy. 

Gormflaith 

Hush, hush! It is too late; 
I dare not go again. 

Lear 

Put down the crown : your hands are base hands yet. 
Give it to me : it issues from my hands. 

Gorniflaith {seating herself on his knee again, and 
crowning herself) 
Let anger keep your eyes steady and bright 
To be my guiding mirror : do not move. 
You have received two queens within your eyes. 

[She laughs clearly, like a bird's sudden song. 
HTGD awakes and, ajter an instant? s 
bewilderment, turns her head toward the 
sound; finding the bed-curtain drop, 
she moves it aside a little with her fingers; 
she watches LEAR and GORMFLAITH 
J or a short time, then the curtain slips 
jrom her weak grasp and she lies motionless. 

Lear {continuing meanwhile) 

Doff it. . . . {GORMFLAITH kisses him.) 
Enough .... {Kiss) Unless you do. . , . 
{Kiss) my will. . . . {Kiss) 

I shall {Kiss) I shall {Kiss) I'll have you 

.... {Kiss) sent. . . . {Kiss) to. . . . {Kiss.) 

26 



Gormflaith Hush. Gordon 

Bottomley 
Lear 

Come to the garden : you shall hear me there. 

Gormflaith 

I dare not leave the Queen. . . . Yes, yes, I 
come. 

Lear 

No, you are better here : the guard would see you. 

Gormflaith 

Not when we reach the pathway near the apple- 
yard. 

\They rise. 

Lear 

Girl, yovi are changed : you yield more beauty so. 
l^^hey go out hand in hand by the doorway 
at the back. As they pass the crumpled 
letter GORMFLAITH drops her hand- 
kerchief on itf then picks up handkerchief 
and letter together and thrusts them into 
her bosom as she passes out. 

Hygd {fingering back the bed-curtain again) 

How have they vanished? What are they doing 
now? 

Gormflaith (singing outside) 
If you have a mind to kiss me 
You shall kiss me in the dark : 
Yet rehearse, or you might miss me — 
Make my mouth your noontide mark. 

27 



Gordon See, I prim and pout it so; 

Bottomley Now take aim and. . . . No, no, no! 
Shut your eyes, or you'll not learn 
Where the darkness soon shall hide me : 
If you will not, then, in turn, 
I'll shut mine. Come, have you spied me? 

[ GORMFLAITWS voice grozvs fainter as 
the song closes. 

Hygd 

Does he remember love- ways used with me? 
Shall I never know? Is it too near? 
I'll watch him at his wooing once again, 
Though I peer up at him across my grave-sill. 

[She gets out oj bed and takes several steps 
toward the garden doorway; she totters 
and szvays^ then, turjting, stumbles back 
to the bedjor support. 

Limbs, will you die? It is not yet the time. 
I know more discipline : I'll make you go. 

\She jumbles alo7ig the bed to the head, then, 
clinging against the wall, drags herself 
tozvard the back oj the room. 

It is too far. I cannot see the wall. 

I will go ten more steps : only ten more. 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. 

Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. 

Sundown is soon to-day: it is cold and dark. 

Now ten steps more, and much will have been 

done. 
One. Two. Three. Four. Ten. 
Eleven. Twelve. Sixteen. Nineteen. Twenty. 
Twenty-one. Twenty-three. Twenty-eight. 

Thirty. Thirty-one. 

28 



x4tkst the turn. Thirty-six. Thirty-nine. Forty. Gordon 
Now only once again. Two. Three. Bottomley 

What do the voices say? I hear too many. 
The door: but here there is no garden. ... Ah! 

[She holds herself up an instant hy the door- 
curtains; then she reels and Jails, her body 
in the room, her head and shoulders beyond 
the curtains. 

GONERIL enters by the door beyond the 
bed, carrying the filled cup carejully in 
both hands. 

Goneril 

Where are you? What have you done? Speak to 
me. 

[Turning and seeing HTGD, she lets the 
cup Jail and leaps to the open door by the 
bed. 

Merryn, hither, hither. . . . Mother, O mother! 
[She goes to HTGD. MERR TN enters. 

Merryn 

Princess, what has she done? Who has left her? 
She must have been alone. 

Goneril Where is Gormflaith? 

Merryn 

Mercy o' mercies, everybody asks me 

For Gormflaith, then for Gormflaith, then for 

Gormflaith, 
And I ask everybody else for her; 
But she is nowhere, and the King will foam. 
Send me no more; I am old with running about 
After a bodiless name. 

29 



Gordon Goneril She has been here, 

Bottomley And she has left the Queen. This is her deed. 

Merryn 

Ah, cruel, cruel! The shame, the pity — 

Goneril Lift. 

[Together they raise HT'CD, and carry her 
to bed. 
She breathes, but something flitters under her 

flesh: 
Wynoc the leech must help us now. Go, run. 
Seek him, and come back quickly, and do not dare 
To come without him. 

Merryn It is useless, lady : 

There's fever at the cowherd's in the marsh. 
And Wynoc broods above it twice a day. 
And I have lately seen him hobble thither. 

Goneril 

I never heard such scornful wickedness 
As that a king's physician so should choose 
To watch and even heal base men and poor — ■ 
And, more than all, when there's a queen 
a-dying. . . . 

Hygd (recovering consciousness) 

Whence come you, dearest daughter? What have 

I done? 
Are you a dream ? I thought I was alone. 
Have you been hunting on the Windy Height? 
Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting. 
Or have I heard you singing through my sleep ? 
Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts 

30 



Of what the ways of life will do to you Gordon 

To mould and maim you, and I have a power Bottomley 

To bring these to expression that I knew not. 
Why do you wear my crown ? Why do you wear 
My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown ? 
I am falling, faUing ! Lift me : hold me up. 

[GONERIL climbs on the bed and supports 
HTGD against her shoulder. 
It is the bed that breaks, for still I sink. 
Grip harder : I am slipping ! 

Goneril Woman, help ! 

[MERRTN hurries round to the front oj the 
bed and supports HTGD on her other 
side. HTGD points at the Jar corner oj 
the room. 

Hygd 

Why is the King's mother standing there? 
She should not wear her crown before me now. 
Send her away, she had a savage mind. 
Will you not hang a shawl across the corner 
So that she cannot stare at me again? 

\JVith a rending sob she buries her face in 
GONERIVS bosom. 
Ah, she is coming ! Do not let her touch me ! 
Brave splendid daughter, how easily you save me : 
But soon will Gormflaith come, she stays for ever. 
O, will she bring my crown to me once more? 
Yes, Gormflaith, yes. . . . Daughter, pay Gorm- 
flaith well. 

Goneril 

Gormflaith has left you lonely: 
'Tis Gormflaith who shall pay. 

31 



Gordon Hygd 

Bottomley No, Gormflaith; Gormflaith. . . . Not my lone- 
liness. . . . 
Everything. . . . Pay Gormflaith. . . . 

[Her head Jails back over GONERIVS 
shoulder and she dies. 

Goneril {laying Hygd down in bed again) 

Send horsemen to the marshes for the leech, 
And let them bind him on a horse's back 
And bring him swiftlier than an old man rides. 

Merryn 

This is no leech's work : she's a dead woman. 

I'd best be finding if the wisdom-women 

Have come from Brita's child-bed to their 

drinking 
By the cook's fire, for soon she'll be past handling. 

Goneril 
This is not death : death could not be like this. 
She is quite warm — though nothing moves in her. 
I did not know death could come all at once : 
If life is so ill-seated no one is safe. 
Cannot we leave her like herself awhile? 
Wait awhile, Merryn. . . . No, no, no; not yet ! 

Merryn 

Child, she is gone and will not come again 
However we cover our faces and pretend 
She will be there if we uncover them. 
I must be hasty, or she'll be as stiff 
As a straw mattress is. 

\She hurries out by the door near the bed. 
32 



Goneril {throwing the whole length oj her body along Gordon 

HygcTs body, and embracing it) Bottomley 

Come back, come back; the things I have not done 
Beat in upon my brain from every side : 
I knov^^ not where to put myself to bear them : 
If I could have you now I could act vv-ell. 
My inward life, deeds that you have not known, 
I burn to tell you in a sudden dread 
That now your ghost discovers them in me. 
Hearken, mother; between us there's a bond 
Of flesh and essence closer than love can cause : 
It cannot be unknit so soon as this. 
And you must know my touch. 
And you shall yield a sign. 
Feel, feel this urging throb : I call to you. . . . 

[GORMFLAHH, still crozvned, enterslby 
the garden doorway. 

Gorniflaith 

Come back ! Help me and shield me ! 

[She disappears through the curtains. 
GONERIL has sprung to her jeet at the 

first sound oJ GORMFLAHH'S voice. 
LEAR enters through the garden doorway, 
leading GORMFLAITH by the hand. 

Lear What is to do? 

Goneril (advancing to meet them with a deep obei- 
sance) 
O, Sir, the Queen is dead : long live the Queen. 
You have been ready with the coronation. 

Lear 

What do you mean? Young madam, will you mock? 

33 



Gordon Goneril 

Bottomley But is not she your choice? 

The old Queen thought so, for I found her here, 

Lipping the prints of her supplanter's feet, 

Prostrate in homage, on her face, silent. 

I tremble within to have seen her fallen down. 

I must be pardoned if I scorn your ways : 

You cannot know this feeling that I know, 

You are not of her kin or house; but I 

Share blood with her, and, though she grew too 

worn 
To be your Queen, she was my mother, Sir. 

Gormflaith 
The Queen has seen me. 

Lear She is safe in bed. 

Goneril 

Do not speak low : your voice sounds guilty so ; 
And there is no more need — she will not wake. 

Lear 

She cannot sleep for ever. When she wakes 

I will announce my purpose in the need 

Of Britain for a prince to follow me. 

And tell her that she is to be deposed. . . . 

What have you done? She is not breathing now. 

She breathed here lately. Is she truly dead? 

Goneril 

Your graceful consort steals from us too soon : 
Will you not tell her that she should remain — 
If she can trust the faith you keep with a queen? 

[She steps to GORMFLAHH, zvho is 

34 



sidling toward the garden door-way, and, Gordon 
taking her hand, leads her to the joot oj Bottomley 
the bed. 

Lady, why will you go? The King intends 

That you shall soon be royal, and thereby 

Admitted to our breed : then stay with us 

In this domestic privacy to mourn 

The grief here fallen on our family. 

Kneel now; I yield the eldest daughter's place. 

Why do you fumble in your bosom so? 

Put your cold hands together; close your eyes, 

In inward isolation to assemble 

Your memories of the dead, your prayers for her. 

\^he turns to LEAR, who has approached 
the bed and drawn back the curtain. 

What utterance of doom would the king use 

Upon a watchman in the castle garth 

Who left his gate and let an enemy in? 

The watcher by the Queen thus left her station : 

The sick bruised Queen is dead of that neglect. 

And what should be the doom on a seducer 

Who drew that sentinel from his fixt watch? 

Lear 

She had long been dying, and she would have died 
Had all her dutiful daughters tended her bed. 

Goneril 

Yes, she had long been dying in her heart. 

She lived to see you give her crown away; 

She died to see you fondle a menial: 

These blows you dealt now, but what elder 

wounds 
Received them to such purpose suddenly? 

35 



Gordon What had you caused her to remember most ? 

Bottomley What things would she be hke to babble over 
In the wild helpless hour when fitful Hfe 
No more can choose what thoughts it shall en- 
courage 
In the tost mind? She has suffered you twice over, 
Your animal thoughts and hungry powers, this 

day, 
Until I knew you unkingly and untrue. 

Lear 

Punishment once taught you daughterly silence ; 
It shall be tried again. . . . What has she said? 

Gotteril 

You cannot touch me now I know your nature : 
Your force upon my mind was only terrible 
When I beHeved you a cruel flawless man. 
Ruler of lands and dreaded judge of men, 
Now you have done a murder with your mind 
Can you see any murderer put to death? 
Can you — 

Lear What has she said? 

Goneril 

Continue in your joy of punishing evil, 

Your passion of just revenge upon wrong-doers, 

Unkingly and untrue? 

Lear Enough: what do you know? 

Goneril 

That which could add a further agony 
To the last agony, the daily poison 

36 



Of her late, withering life ; but never word Gordon 

Of fairer hours or any lost delight. Bottomley 

Have you no memory, either, of her youth, 

While she was still to use, spoil, forsake. 

That maims your new contentment with a longing 

For what is gone and will not come again? 

Lear 

I did not know that she could die to-day. 
She had a bloodless beauty that cheated me: 
She was not born for wedlock. She shut me out. 
She is no colder now. . . . I'll hear no more. 
You shall be answered afterward for this. 
Put something over her : get her buried : 
I will not look on her again. 

\He breaks from GONERIL and flings 
abruptly out by the door near the bed, 

Gormflaith 

My king, you leave me ! 

Goner it Soon we follow him : 

But, ah, poor fragile beauty, you cannot rise 
While this grave burden weights your drooping 
head. 

[Laying her hand caressingly on GORM- 
FLJITH^S neck, she gradually forces 
her head farther and farther down. 
You were not nurtured to sustain a crown, 
Your unanointed parents could not breed 
The spirit that ten hundred years must ripen. 
Lo, how you sink and fail. 

Gormflaith You had best take care. 

For where my neck has bruises yours shall have 
wounds. 

37 



Gordon The King knows of your wolfish snapping at me : 

Bottomley He will protect me. 

Goneril Ay, if he is in time. 

Gormflaith {taking off the crown and holding it up 
blindly toward Goneril with one hand) 

Take it and let me go ! 

Goneril Nay, not to me : 

You are the Queen's, to serve her even in death. 
Yield her her own. Approach her : do not fear; 
She will not chide you or forgive you now. 
Go on your knees; the crown still holds you- 
down. 

[GORMFLAHH stumbles forward on her 
knees and lays the crown on the bed, thevk 
crouches motionlessly against the bedside. 

Goneril {taking the crown and putting it on the deadr 
Queen^s head) 
Mother and Queen, to you this holiest circlet 
Returns, by you renews its purpose and pride; 
Though it is sullied with a menial warmth. 
Your august coldness shall rehallow it, 
And when the young lewd blood that lent it heat 
Is also cooler we can well forget. 

[She steps to GORMFLAHH, 

Rise. Come, for here there is no more to do. 
And let us seek your chamber, if you will. 
There to confer in greater privacy; 
For we have now interment to prepare. 

[She leads GORMFLAHH to the door^ 
near the bed, 

38 



You must walk first, you are still the Queen Gordon 
elect. Bottomley 

[When GORMFLJITH has passed before 
her GONERIL unsheathes her hunting 
knije. 

Gormflaith (turning in the doorway) 
What will you do ? 

Goneril {thrusting her forward with the haft of the 
knife) 

On. On. On. Go in. 
[She follows GORMFLAITH out. 
After a momenfs interval two elderly 
women^ one a little younger than the other, 
enter by the same door: they wear black 
hoods and shapeless black gowns with 
large sleeves that flap like the wings of 
ungainly birds: between them they carry 
a heavy cauldron of hot water, 

The Younger Woman 

We were listening. We were listening. 

The Elder Woman We were both listening. 

The Younger Woman 
Did she struggle? 

The Elder Woman She could not struggle long. 

[They set down the cauldron at the foot of 
the bed. 

The Elder Woman {curtseying to the Queen^s body) 
Saving your presence, Madam, we are come 

39 



Gordon To make you sweeter than you'll be hereafter, 

Bottomley And then be done with you. 

7 he ITounger Woman {curtseying in turn) 
Three days together, my Lady, y'have had me 

ducked 
For easing a foolish maid at the wrong time; 
But now your breath is stopped and you are 

colder, 
And you shall be as wet as a drowned rat 
Ere I have done with you. 

The Elder Etonian (Jumblifig in the jolds oj the robe 
that hangs on the wall) 
Her pocket is empty; Merryn has been here first. 
Hearken, and then begin : 
You have not touched a royal corpse before, 
But I have stretched a king and an old queen, 
A king's aunt and a king's brother too, 
Without much boasting of a still-born princess; 
So that I know, as a priest knows his prayers. 
All that is written in the chamberlain's book 
About the handling of exalted corpses, 
Stripping them and trussing them for the grave : 
And there it says that the chief corpse- washer 
Shall take for her own use by sacred right 
The coverlid, the upper sheet, the mattress 
Of any bed in which a queen has died. 
And the last robe of state the body wore ; 
While humbler helpers may divide among them 
The under sheet, the pillow, and the bed-gown 
Stript from the cooling queen. 
Be thankful, then, and praise me every day 
That I have brought no other women with me 
To spoil you of your share. 

40 



T^he Younger Woman Gordon 

Ah, you have always been a friend to me : Bottomley 

Many's the time I have said I did not know 
How I could even have lived but for your kind- 
ness. 

\^he ELDER WOMAN draws down the 
bedclothes Jrom the Queen^s body, loosens 
them from the bed, and throws them on the 
floor. 

'[he Elder Woman 

Pull her feet straight : is your mind wandering? 

\^he commences to j old the bedclothes, singing 
as she moves about. 

A louse crept out of my lady's shift — 
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee — 
Crying " Oi ! Oi ! We are turned adrift ; 
The lady's bosom is cold and stiffed, 
And her arm-pit's cold for me." 

\While the ELDER WOMAN sings, 
the rOUNGER WOMAN straightens 
the Queen^s jeet and ties them together, 
draws the pillow Jrom under her head, 
gathers her hair in one hand and knots it 
roughly; then she loosens her nightgown, 
revealing a jewel hung on a cord round 
the Queen's neck. 

7he Elder Woman (running to the vacant side oj the 
bed) 
What have you there? Give it to me. 

^he Toufiger Woman It is mine : 

I found it, 

41 



Gordon The Elder Woman 

Bottomley Leave it. 

The Younger Woman Let go. 

The Elder Woman Leave it, I say. 

Will you not? Will you not? An eye for a jewel, 
then! 

\^%he attacks the J ace oj the YOUNGER 
WOMAN with her disengaged hand, 

The Younger Woman {starting hack) 
Oh! 
[The ELDER WOMAN breaks the cord 
and thrusts the jewel into her pocket. 

The Younger Woman 
Aie! Aie! Aie! Old thief! You are always thieving! 
You stole a necklace on your wedding day : 
You could not bear a child, you stole your daughter : 
You stole a shroud the morn your husband died : 
Last week you stole the Princess Regan's comb . . 
[She stumbles into the chair by the bed, and^ 
throwing her loose sleeves over her heady 
rocks herself and moans. 

The Elder Woman {resuming her clothes-folding and 
her song) 

*' The lady's linen's no longer neat ; " — 

Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee — 

" Her savour is neither warm nor sweet ; 

It's close for two in a winding sheet, 

And Hce are too good for worms to eat ; 

So here's no place for me." 

[GONERIL enters by the door near the 



bed: her knife and the hand that holds it Gordon 
are bloody. She pauses a moment irreso- Bottomley 
lutely. 

The Elder Woman 
Still work for old Hrogneda, little Princess ? 

[GONERIL goes straight to the cauldron^ 
passing the women as if they were not 
there: she kneels and washes her knife 
and her hand in it. The women retire to 
the back of the chamber. 

Goner il {speaking to herself) 
The way is easy : and it is to be used. 
How could this need have been conceived slowly? 
In a keen mind it should have leapt and burnt : 
What I have done would have been better done 
When my sad mother lived and could feel joy. 
This striking without thought is better than 

hunting ; 
She showed more terror than an animal, 
She was more shiftless. . . . 
A little blood is lightly washed away, 
A common stain that need not be remembered; 
And a hot spasm of rightness quickly born 
Can guide me to kill justly and shall guide, 

[LEAR enters by the door near the bed. 

Lear 

Goneril, Gormflaith, Gormflaith. . . . Have you 
seen Gormflaith? 

Goneril 

I led her to her chamber lately, Sir. 

43 



Gordon Lear 

Bottomley A7, she is in her chamber. She is there. 

Goneril 

Have you been there already? Could you not 
wait ? 

Lear 

Daughter, she is bleeding : she is slain. 

Goneril {rising from the cauldron with dripping hands) 
Yes, she is slain : I did it with a knife : 
And in this water is dissolved her blood, 

{Raising her arms and sprinkling the 
QueerCs body) 
That now I scatter on the Queen of death 
For signal to her spirit that I can slake 
Her long corrosion of misery with such balm — 
Blood for weeping, terror for woe, death for death, 
A broken body for a broken heart. 
What will you say against me and my deed? 

Lear 

That now you cannot save yourself from me. 
While your blind virgin power still stood apart 
In an unused, unviolated life, 
You judged me in my weakness, and because 
I felt you unflawed I could not answer you; 
But you have mingled in mortality 
And violently begun the common life 
By fault against your fellows ; and the state, 
The state of Britain that inheres in me 
Not touched by my humanity or sin. 
Passions or privy acts, shall be as hard 
And savage to you as to a murderess. 

44 



Goner il {taking a letter jrom her girdle) Gordon 

I found a warrant in her favoured bosom, King : Bottomley 
She wore this on her heart when you were crown- 
ing her. 

Lear 

But this is not my hand : 

{Looking about him on the floor) 
Where is the other letter? 

Goneril 

Is there another letter? What should it say? 

Lear 

There is no other letter if you have none. 

{Reading 

" Open your window when the moon is dead, 

And I will come again. 

The men say everywhere that you are faith- 
less. . . . 

And your eyes shifty eyes. Ah, but I love you, 
Gormflaith.'' . . . 

This is not hers : she'd not receive such words. 

Goneril 

Her name stands twice therein : her perfume fills 

it: 
My knife went through it ere I found it on her. 

Lear 

The filth is suitably dead. You are my true 
daughter. 

Goneril 

I do not understand how men can govern, 

45 



Gordon Use craft and exercise the duty of cunning, 

Bottomley Anticipate treason, treachery meet with treach- 
ery. 
And yet beUeve a woman because she looks 
Straight in their eyes with mournful, trustfu 

gaze, 
And lisps like innocence, all gentleness. 
Your Gormflaith could not answer a woman's 

eyes. 
I did not need to read her in a letter; 
I am not woman yet, but I can feel 
What untruths are instinctive in my kind, 
And how some men desire deceit from us. 
Come ; let these washers do what they must do : 
Or shall your Queen be wrapped and coffined 
awry? 

[She goes out by the garden doorway. 

Lear 

I thought she had been broken long ago : 
She must be wedded and broken, I cannot do it. 
[Hejollows GONERIL out. 
The two women return to the bedside. 

The Elder Woman 

Poor, masterful King, he is no easier, 
Although his tearful wife is gone at last : 
A wilful girl shall prick and thwart him now. 
Old gossip, we must hasten; the Queen is setting. 
Lend me a pair of pennies to weight her eyes. 

The Tounger Woman 
Find your own pennies : then you can steal them 
safely. 

46 



l^he Elder Woman Gordon 

Praise you the gods of Britain, as I do praise them, Bottomley 
That I have been sweet-natured from my birth, 
And that I lack your unforgiving mind. 
Friend of the v^^orms, help me to lift her clear 
And draw away the under sheet for you ; 
Then go and spread the shroud by the hall fire — 
I never could put damp linen on a corpse. 

[She sings. 

The louse made off unhappy and wet; — 

Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee — 

He's looking for us, the little pet ; 

So haste, for her chin's to tie up yet, 

And let us be gone with what we can get^ 

Her ring for thee, her gown for Bet, 

Her pocket turned out for me. 



Curtain. 



47 



RUPERT BROOKE 



TIARE TAHITI Rupert 

Brooke 

Mamua, when our laughter ends, 

And hearts and bodies, brown as white, 

Are dust about the doors of friends. 

Or scent ablowing down the night, 

Then, oh! then, the wise agree. 

Comes our immortahty. 

Mamua, there waits a land 

Hard for us to understand. 

Out of time, beyond the sun. 

All are one in Paradise, 

You and Pupure are one, 

And Taii, and the ungainly wise. 

There the Eternals are, and there 

The Good, the Lovely, and the True, 

And Types, whose earthly copies were 

The foohsh broken things we knew ; 

There is the Face, whose ghosts we are; 

The real, the never-setting Star; 

And the Flower, of which we love 

Faint and fading shadows here; 

Never a tear, but only Grief; 

Dance, but not the limbs that move; 

Songs in Song shall disappear; 

Instead of lovers, Love shall be; 

For hearts. Immutability; 

And there, on the Ideal Reef, 

Thunders the Everlasting Sea ! 

And my laughter, and my pain. 
Shall home to the Eternal Brain ; 
And all lovely things, they say. 
Meet in Loveliness again; 
Miri's laugh, Teipo's feet, 



Rupert And the hands of Matua, 

Brooke Stars and sunlight there shall meet, 

Coral's hues and rainbows there, 
And Teiira's braided hair; 
And with the starred tiare''s white, 
And white birds in the dark ravine, 
And flamboyants ablaze at night, 
And jewels, and evening's after-green. 
And dawns of pearl and gold and red, 
Mamua, your lovelier head! 
And there'll no more be one who dreams 
Under the ferns, of crumbling stuff. 
Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems. 
All time-entangled human love. 
And you'll no longer swing and sway 
Divinely down the scented shade, 
Where feet to Ambulation fade. 
And moons are lost in endless Day. 
How shall we wind these wreaths of ours. 
Where there are neither heads nor flowers? 
Oh, Heaven's Heaven! — but we'll be missing 
The palms, and sunlight, and the south; 
And there's an end, I think, of kissing. 
When our mouths are one with Mouth. . . . 

Tail here, Mamua, 
Crown the hair, and come away ! 
Hear the calling of the moon. 
And the whispering scents that stray 
About the idle warm lagoon. 
Hasten, hand in human hand, 
Down the dark, the flowered way. 
Along the whiteness of the sand. 
And in the water's soft caress, 
Wash the mind of foolishness, 

52 



Mamua, until the day. Rupert 

Spend the gHttering moonUght there Brooke 

Pursuing down the soundless deep 

Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair, 

Or floating lazy, half-asleep. 

Dive and double and follow after, 

Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call, 

With lips that fade, and human laughter, 

And faces individual, 

Well this side of Paradise ! . . . 

There's little comfort in the wise. 



53 



Rupert THE GREAT LOVER 

Brooke 

I have been so great a lover : filled my days 
So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, 
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, 
Desire illimitable, and still content, 
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, 
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear 
Our hearts at random down the dark of life. 
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife 
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far. 
My night shall be remembered for a star 
That outshone all the suns of all men's days. 
Shall I not crown them with immortal praise 
Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me 
High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see 
The inenarrable godhead of delight .? 
Love is a flame ; — we have beaconed the world's night. 
A city: — and we have built it, these and L 
An emperor : — we have taught the world to die. 
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, 
And the high cause of Love's magnificence, 
And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names 
Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, 
* And set them as a banner, that men may know, 
To dare the generations, burn, and blow 
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming, . . . 

These I have loved : 

White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, 
Ringed with blue lines ; and feathery, faery dust ; 
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust 
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; 
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; 
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers ; 

54 



And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny Rupert 
hours, Brooke 

Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; 
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon 
Smooth away trouble ; and the rough male kiss 
Of blankets; grainy wood; hve hair that is 
Shining and free ; blue-massing clouds ; the keen 
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; 
The benison of hot water; furs to touch; 
The good smell of old clothes ; and other such — 
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers. 
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers 
About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . 

Dear names, 
And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; 
Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; 
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; 
Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain. 
Soon turned to pq^ce; and the deep-panting train; 
Firm sands; the little dulHng edge of foam 
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; 
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold 
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; 
Sleep ; and high places; footprints in the dew; 
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; 
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass ;^ 
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, 
Whatever passes not, in the great hour. 
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power 
To hold them with me through the gate of Death. 
They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, 
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust 
And sacramented covenant to the dust. 
— Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake. 
And give what's left of love again, and make 

55 



Rupert New friends, now strangers. . . . 

Brooke But the best Fve known, 

Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown 
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains 
Of living men, and dies. 

Nothing remains. 

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again 

This one last gift I give : that after men 

Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed, 

Praise you, *A11 these were lovely ' ; say, ' He loved.' 



56 



BEAUTY AND BEAUTY Rupert 

Brooke 
When Beauty and Beauty meet 

All naked, fair to fair, 
The earth is crying-sweet, 

And scattering-bright the air, 
Eddying, dizzying, closing round. 

With soft and drunken laughter ; 
Veiling all that may befall 

After — after — 

Where Beauty and Beauty met, 

Earth's still a-tremble there. 
And winds are scented yet, 

And memory-soft the air. 
Bosoming, folding glints of light, 

And shreds of shadowy laughter; 
Not the tears that fill the years 

After — after — 



57 



Rupert HEAVEN 

Brooke p .^j^ (fly-replete, in depth of June, 

Dawdling away their wat'ry noon) 
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear. 
Each secret fishy hope or fear. 
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; 
But is there anything Beyond? 
This life cannot be All, they swear, 
For how unpleasant, if it were ! 
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good 
Shall come of Water and of Mud; 
And, sure, the reverent eye must see 
A Purpose in Liquidity. 
We darkly know, by Faith we cry, 
The future is not Wholly Dry. 
Mud unto mud! — Death eddies near — 
Not here the appointed End, not here ! 
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time, 
Is wetter water, slimier slime ! 
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One 
Who swam ere rivers were begun. 
Immense, of fishy form and mind. 
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind; 
And under that Almighty Fin, 
The littlest fish may enter in. 
Oh ! never fly conceals a hook. 
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook, 
But more than mundane weeds are there. 
And mud, celestially fair; 
Fat caterpillars drift around. 
And Paradisal grubs are found; 
Unfading moths, immortal flies. 
And the worm that never dies. 
And in that Heaven of all their wish. 
There shall be no more land, say fish. 

58 



CLOUDS Rupert 

Brooke 

Down the blue night the unending columns press 
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, 
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow 

Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. 

Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, 
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow. 
As who would pray good for the world, but know 

Their benediction empty as they bless. 

They say that the Dead die not, but remain 
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. 
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, 
In wise majestic melancholy train, 

And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, 
And men, coming and going on the earth. 



59 



Rupert SONNET 

DTooke (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for 

Psychical Research) 

Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun, 
We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread 
Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead 

Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run 

Down some close-covered by-way of the air, 
Some low sweet alley between wind and wind. 
Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find 

Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there 

Spend in pure converse our eternal day; 

Think each in each, immediately wise; 
Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say 

What this tumultuous body now denies ; 
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away; 

And see, no longer blinded by our eyes. 



60 



THE SOLDIER Rupert 

Brooke 
If I should die, think only this of me : 

That there's some corner of a foreign field 
That is for ever England. There shall be 

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
A body of England's, breathing English air. 

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, 
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England 
^ given; 
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness. 
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 



6i 



WILLIAM H. DAVIES 



THUNDERSTORMS William 

H. Davies 

My mind has thunderstorms, 

That brood for hea-vy hours : 
Until they rain me words, 

My thoughts are drooping flowers 
And sulking, silent birds. 

Yet come, dark thunderstorms. 

And brood your heavy hours ; 
For when you rain me words 

My thoughts are dancing flowers 
And joyful singing birds. 



65 



William THE MIND'S LIBERTY 

H. Davies 

The mind, with its own eyes and ears, 

May for these others have no care ; 
No matter where this body is, 

The mind is free to go elsewhere. 
My mind can be a sailor, when 

This body's still confined to land; 
And turn these mortals into trees. 

That walk in Fleet Street or the Strand. 

So, when I'm passing Charing Cross, 

Where porters work both night and day, 
I ofttimes hear sweet Malpas Brook, 

That flows thrice fifty miles away. 
And when I'm passing near St Paul's, 

I see, beyond the dome and crowd, 
Twm Barium, that green pap in Gwent, 

With its dark nipple in a cloud. 



66 



THE MOON William 

H. Davies 
Thy beauty haunts me heart and soul, 

Oh thou fair Moon, so close and bright ; 
Thy beauty makes me like the child 
That cries aloud to own thy Hght : 
The httle child that lifts each arm 
To press thee to her bosom warm. 

Though there are birds that sing this night 
With thy white beams across their throats, 

Let my deep silence speak for me 

More than for them their sweetest notes : 

Who worships thee till music fails, 

Is greater than thy nightingales. 



(n 



William WHEN ON A SUMMER^S MORN 

H. Davies 

When on a summer's morn I wake, 

And open my two eyes, 
Out to the clear, born-singing rills 
My bird-like spirit flies, 

To hear the Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush, 

Or any bird in song; 
And common leaves that hum all day, 

Without a throat or tongue. 

And when Time strikes the hour for sleep, 

Back in my room alone. 
My heart has many a sweet bird's song — 

And one that's all my own. 



68 



A GREAT TIME William 

H. Davies 
Sweet Chance, that led my steps abroad, 

Beyond the town, where wild flowers grow — 
A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord, 

How rich and great the times are now ! 
Know, all ye sheep 
And cows, that keep 
On staring that I stand so long 

In grass that's wet from heavy rain — 
A rainbow and a cuckoo's song 
May never come together again; 
May never come 
This side the tomb. 



69 



WilHam THE HAWK 

H. Davies 

Thou dost not fly, thou art not perched, 

The air is all around : 
What is it that can keep thee set. 

From falling to the ground? 
The concentration of thy mind 

Supports thee in the air; 
As thou dost watch the small young birds, 

With such a deadly care. 

My mind has such a hawk as thou. 

It is an evil mood; 
It comes when there's no cause for grief, 

And on my joys doth brood. 
Then do I see my life in parts; 

The earth receives my bones. 
The common air absorbs my mind — 

It knows not flowers from stones. 



70 



SWEET STAY-AT-HOME William 

H. Davies 
Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content, 
Thou knowest of no strange continent: 
Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep 
A gentle motion with the deep ; 
Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas, 
Where scent comes forth in every breeze. 
Thou hast not seen the rich grape grow 
For miles, as far as eyes can go; 
Thou hast not seen a summer's night 
When maids could sew by a worm's Hght ; 
Nor the North Sea in spring send out 
Bright hues that like birds flit about 
In solid cages of white ice — 
Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Love-one-place. 
Thou hast not seen black fingers pick 
White cotton when the bloom is thick, 
Nor heard black throats in harmony; 
Nor hast thou sat on stones that lie 
Flat on the earth, that once did rise 
To hide proud kings from common eyes. 
Thou hast not seen plains full of bloom 
Where green things had such little room 
They pleased the eye like fairer flowers — 
Sweet Stay-at-Home, all these long hours. 
Sweet Well-content, sweet Love-one-place, 
Sweet, simple maid, bless thy dear face; 
For thou hast made more homely stuff 
Nurture thy gentle self enough; 
I love thee for a heart that's kind — 
Not for the knowledge in thy mind. 



71 



William A FLEETING PASSION 

H. Davies 

Thou shalt not laugh, thou shalt not romp, 

Let's grimly kiss with bated breath; 
As quietly and solemnly 

As Life when it is kissing Death. 
Now in the silence of the grave. 

My hand is squeezing that soft breast; 
While thou dost in such passion lie, 

It mocks me with its look of rest. 

But when the morning comes at last. 

And we must part, our passions cold, 
You'll think of some new feather, scarf 

To buy with my small piece of gold; 
And I'll be dreaming of green lanes. 

Where little things with beating hearts 
Hold shining eyes between the leaves. 

Till men with horses pass, and carts. 



72 



THE BIRD OF PARADISE William 

H. Davies 
Here comes Kate Summers, who, for gold. 

Takes any man to bed: 
" You knew my friend, Nell Barnes," she said; 
" You knew Nell Barnes — she's dead. 

" Nell Barnes was bad on all you men, 

Unclean, a thief as well ; 
Yet all my life I have not found 

A better friend than Nell. 

*' So I sat at her side at last, 

For hours, till she was dead ; 
And yet she had no sense at all 

Of any word I said. 

" For all her cry but came to this — 

' Not for the world ! Take care : 
Don't touch that bird of paradise, 

Perched on the bed-post there! ' 

" I asked her would she like some grapes, 

Some damsons ripe and sweet; 
A custard made with new-laid eggs, 

Or tender fowl to eat. 

" I promised I would follow her, 

To see her in her grave; 
And buy a wreath with borrowed pence. 

If nothing I could save. 

" Yet still her cry but came to this — 

' Not for the world! Take care: 
Don't touch that bird of paradise, 

Perched on the bed-post there! ' " 



WALTER DE LA MARE 



MUSIC Walter 

dela 
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, Mare 

And all her lovely things even lovelier grow; 
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees 
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. 

When music sounds, out of the water rise 
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, 
Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, 
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. 

When music sounds, all that I was I am 
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; 
And from Time's woods break into distant song 
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along. 



11 



Walter WANDERERS 

dela 

Mare Wide are the meadows of night, 

And daisies are shining there, 
Tossing their lovely dews, 
Lustrous and fair; 
And through these sweet fields go, 
Wanderers amid the stars — 
Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, 
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. 

'Tired in their silver, they move. 
And circling, whisper and say. 
Fair are the blossoming meads of delight 
Through which we stray. 



78 



MELMILLO Walter 

dela 
Three and thirty birds there stood Mare 

In an elder in a wood; 
Called Melmillo— flew off three, 
Leaving thirty in the tree; 
Called Melmillo — nine now gone, 
And the boughs held twenty-one; 
Called Melmillo — and eighteen 
Left but three to nod and preen; 
Called Melmillo — three — two — one — 
Now of birds were feathers none. 

Then stole slim Melmillo in 

To that wood all dusk and green. 

And with lean long palms outspread 

Softly a strange dance did tread; 

Not a note of music she 

Had for echoing company; 

All the birds were flown to rest 

In the hollow of her breast; 

In the wood — thorn, elder, willow — 

Danced alone — lone danced Melmillo. 



79 



Walter ALEXANDER 

dela 

Mare It was the Great Alexander, 

Capped with a golden helm, 
Sate in the ages, in his floating ship. 
In a dead calm. 

Voices of sea-maids singing 
Wandered across the deep : 
The sailors labouring on their oars 
Rowed as in sleep. 

AU the high pomp of Asia, 
Charmed by that siren lay. 
Out of their weary and dreaming minds 
Faded away. 

Like a bold boy sate their Captain, 
His glamour withered and gone. 
In the souls of his brooding mariners. 
While the song pined on. 

Time like a falling dew. 
Life like the scene of a dream 
Laid between slumber and slumber. 
Only did seem. . . . 

O Alexander, then. 
In all us mortals too. 
Wax not so overbold 
On the wave dark- blue! 

Come the calm starry night, 
W^ho then will hear 
Aught save the singing 
Of the sea-maids clear? 

80 



THE MOCKING FAIRY Walter 

dek 
' Won't you look out of your window, Mrs Gill ? ' Mare 
Quoth the Fairy, nidding, nodding in the garden; 

* Can^t you look out of your window, Mrs Gill? ' 

Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden ; 
But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still. 
And the ivy-tod 'neath the empty sill. 
And never from her window looked out Mrs Gill 

On the Fairy shrilly mocking in the garden. 

* What have they done with you, you poor Mrs Gillr' 

Quoth the Fairy brightly glancing in the garden ; 
' Where have they hidden you, you poor old Mrs 
Gill? ' 

Quoth the Fairy dancing Hghtly in the garden; 
But night's faint veil now wrapped the hiU, 
Stark 'neath the stars stood the dead-still Mill, 
And out of her cold cottage never answered Mrs Gill 

The Fairy mimbling mambling in the garden. 



8i 



Walter FULL MOON 

dela 

Mare One night as Dick lay half asleep, 

Into his drowsy eyes 
A great still light began to creep 

From out the silent skies. 
It was the lovely moon's, for when 

He raised his dreamy head, 
Her surge of silver filled the pane 

And streamed across his bed. 
So, for awhile, each gazed at each- 
Dick and the solemn moon — 
Till, climbing slowly on her way, 
She vanished, and was gone. 



82 



OFF THE GROUND Walter 

dela 
Three jolly Farmers Mare 

Once bet a pound 
Each dance the others would 
Off the ground. 
Out of their coats 
They slipped right soon, 
And neat and nicesome 
Put each his shoon. 
One— Two— Three! 
And away they go, 
Not too fast. 
And not too slow; 
Out from the elm-tree's 
Noonday shadow, 
Into the sun 
And across the meadow. 
Past the schoolroom. 
With knees well bent, 
Fingers a-flicking, 
They dancing went. 
Up sides and over, 
And round and round, 
They crossed click-clacking 
The Parish bound; 
By Tupman's meadow 
They did their mile, 
Tee-to-tum 
On a three-barred stile. 
Then straight through Whipham, 
Downhill to Week, 
Footing it lightsome. 
But not too quick. 
Up fields to Watchet, 

83 



Walter And on through W/e, 

de la Till seven fine churches 

Mare They'd seen skip by — 

Seven fine churches, 
And five old mills, 
Farms in the valley, 
And sheep on the hills ; 
Old Man's Acre 
And Dead Man's Poo! 
All left behind. 

As they danced through Wool. 
And Wool gone by, 
Like tops that seem 
To spin in sleep 
They danced in dream : 
Withy — Wellover — 
Was sop — Wo — 
Like an old clock 
Their heels did go. 
A league and a league 
And a league they went. 
And not one weary, 
And not one spent. 
And lo, and behold! 
Past Willow-cum-Leigh 
Stretched with its waters 
The great green sea. 
Says Farmer Bates, 
' I puffs and I blows. 
What's under the water, 
Why, no man knows ! ' 
Says Farmer Giles, 
* My mind comes weak. 
And a good man drownded 
Is far to seek.' 

84 



But Farmer Turvey, Walter 

On twirling toes, ^^ 1^ 

Up's with his gaiters, Mare 

And in he goes : 

Down where the mermaids 

Pluck and play 

On their twangling harps 

In a sea-green day; 

Down where the mermaids, 

Finned and fair, 

Sleek with their combs 

Their yellow hair 

Bates and Giles — 

On the shingle sat, 

Gazing at Turvey's 

Floating hat. 

But never a ripple 

Nor bubble told 

Where he was supping 

Off plates of gold. 

Never an echo 

Rilled through the sea 

Of the feasting and dancing 

And minstrelsy. 

They called— called— called: 

Came no reply: 

Nought but the ripples' 

Sandy sigh. 

Then glum and silent 

They sat instead. 

Vacantly brooding 

On home and bed, 

Till both together 

Stood up and said: — 

' Us knows not, dreams not, 

85 



Walter Where you be, 

de la Turvey, unless 

Mare In the deep blue sea ; 

But axcusing silver — 
And it comes most willing — 
Here's us two paying 
Our forty shilling; 
For it's sartin sure, Turvey, 
Safe and sound. 

You danced us square, Turvey, 
Off the ground! ' 



86 



JOHN DRINKWATER 



A TOWN WINDOW John 

Drinkwater 
Beyond my window in the night 
Is but a drab inglorious street, 
Yet there the frost and clean starlight 
As over Warwick woods are sweet. 

Under the grey drift of the town 

The crocus works among the mould 
As eagerly as those that crown 

The Warwick spring in flame and gold. 

And when the tramway down the hill 

Across the cobbles moans and rings, 
There is about my window-sill 

The tumult of a thousand wings. 



89 



John OF GREATHAM 

Drinkwater (Jq those who live there) 

For peace, than knowledge more desirable, 
Into your Sussex quietness I came, 

When summer's green and gold and azure fell 
Over the world in flame. 

And peace upon your pasture-lands I found, 
Where grazing flocks drift on continually, 

As little clouds that travel with no sound 
Across a windless sky. 

Out of your oaks the birds call to their mates 
That brood among the pines, where hidden deep 

From curious eyes a world's adventure waits 
In columned choirs of sleep. 

Under the calm ascension of the night 
We heard the mellow lapsing and return 

Of night-owls purring in their groundling flight 
Through lanes of darkling fern. 

Unbroken peace when all the stars were drawn 
Back to their lairs of light, and ranked along 

From shire to shire the downs out of the dawn 
Were risen in golden song. 



I sing of peace who have known the large unrest 
Of men bewildered in their travelling, 

And I have known the bridal earth unblest 
By the brigades of spring. 



90 



I have known that loss. And now the broken John 

thought Drinkwater 

Of nations marketing in death I know, 
The very winds to threnodies are wrought 

That on your downlands blow\ 

I sing of peace. Was it but yesterday 
I came among your roses and your corn? 
Then momently amid this wrath I pray 
For yesterday reborn. 



91 



John THE CARVER IN STONE 

Drinkwater 

He was a man with wide and patient eyes, 

Grey, Hke the drift of twitch-fires blown in June, 

That, without fearing, searched if any wrong 

Might threaten from your heart. Grey eyes he had 

Under a brow was drawn because he knew 

So many seasons to so many pass 

Of upright service, loyal, unabased 

Before the world seducing, and so, barren 

Of good words praising and thought that mated his. 

He carved in stone. Out of his quiet life 

He watched as any faithful seaman charged 

With tidings of the myriad faring sea. 

And thoughts and premonitions through his mind 

Sailing as ships from strange and storied lands 

His hungry spirit held, till all they were 

Found living witness in the chiselled stone. 

Slowly out of the dark confusion, spread 

By life's innumerable venturings 

Over his brain, he would triumph into the light 

Of one clear mood, unblemished of the bUnd 

Legions of errant thought that cried about 

His rapt seclusion : as a pearl unsoiled^ 

Nay, rather washed to lonelier chastity. 

In gritty mud. And then would come a bird, 

A flower, or the wind moving upon a flower, 

A beast at pasture, or a clustered fruit, 

A peasant face as were the saints of old. 

The leer of custom, or the bow of the moon 

Swung in miraculous poise — some stray from the world 

Of things created by the eternal mind 

In joy articulate. And his perfect mood 

Would dwell about the token of God's mood, 

Until in bird or flower or moving wind 

92 



Or flock or shepherd or the troops of heaven John 

It sprang in one fierce moment of desire Drinkwater 

To visible form. 

Then would his chisel work among the stone, 

Persuading it of petal or of limb 

Or starry curve, till risen anew there sang 

Shape out of chaos, and again the vision 

Of one mind single from the world was pressed 

Upon the daily custom of the sky 

Or field or the body of man. 

His people 
Had many gods for worship. The tiger-god, 
The owl, the dewlapped bull, the running pard. 
The camel, and the lizard of the slime. 
The ram with quivering fleece and fluted horn. 
The crested eagle and the doming bat 
Were sacred. And the king and his high priests 
Decreed a temple, wide on columns huge. 
Should top the cornlands to the sky's far line. 
They bade the carvers carve along the walls 
Images of their gods, each one to carve 
As he desired, his choice to name his god. . . . 
And many came; and he among them, glad 
Of three leagues' travel through the singing air 
Of dawn among the boughs yet bare of green, 
The eager flight of the spring leading his blood 
Into smft lofty channels of the air. 

Proud as an eagle riding to the sun 

An eagle, clean of pinion — there's his choice. 

Daylong they worked under the growing roof. 
One at his leopard, one the staring ram. 
And he winning his eagle from the stone. 
Until each man had carved one image out, 
Arow beyond the portal of the house. 

93 



John They stood arow, the company of gods, 

Drinkwater Camel and bat, lizard and bull and ram, 

The pard and owl, dead figures on the wall, 
Figures of habit driven on the stone 
By chisels governed by no heat of the brain 
But drudges of hands that moved by easy rule. 
Proudly recorded mood was none, no thought 
Plucked from the dark battalions of the mind 
And throned in everlasting sight. But one 
God of them all was witness of belief 
And large adventure dared. His eagle spread 
Wide pinions on a cloudless ground of heaven, 
Glad with the heart's high courage of that dawn 
Moving upon the ploughlands newly sown, 
Dead stone the rest. He looked, and knew it so. 

Then came the king with priests and counsellors 

And many chosen of the people, wise 

With words weary of custom, and eyes askew 

That watched their neighbour face for any news 

Of the best way of judgment, till, each sure 

None would determine with authority. 

All spoke in prudent praise. One liked the owl 

Because an owl blinked on the beam of his barn. 

One, hoarse with crying gospels in the street. 

Praised most the ram, because the common folk 

Wore breeches made of ram's wool. One declared 

The tiger pleased him best, — the man who carved 

The tiger-god was halt out of the womb — 

A man to praise, being so pitiful. 

And one, whose eyes dwelt in a distant void, 

With spell and omen pat upon his lips, 

And a purse for any crystal prophet ripe, 

A zealot of the mist, gazed at the bull — 

A lean ill-shapen bull of meagre lines 

94 



That scarce the steel had graved upon the stone — John 

Saying that here was very mystery Drinkwater 

And truth, did men but know. And one there was 

Who praised his eagle, but remembering 

The lither pinion of the swift, the curve 

That liked him better of the mirrored swan. 

And they who carved the tiger-god and ram, 

The camel and the pard, the owl and bull, 

And lizard, listened greedily, and made 

Humble denial of their worthiness, 

And when the king his royal judgment gave 

That all had fashioned well, and bade that each 

Re-shape his chosen god along the walls 

Till all the temple boasted of their skill. 

They bowed themselves in token that as this 

Never had carvers been so fortunate. 

Only the man with wide and patient eyes 
Made no denial, neither bowed his head. 
Already while they spoke his thoughts had gone 
Far from his eagle, leaving it for a sign 
Loyally wrought of one deep breath of life. 
And played about the image of a toad 
That crawled among his ivy leaves. A queer 
Puff-bellied toad, with eyes that always stared 
Sidelong at heaven and saw no heaven there, 
Weak-hammed, and with a throttle somehow twisted 
Beyond full wholesome draughts of air, and skin 
Of wrinkled lips, the only zest or will 
The little flashing tongue searching the leaves. 
And king and priest, chosen and counsellor, 
BabbHng out of their thin and jealous brains, 
Seemed strangely one; a queer enormous toad 
Panting under giant leaves of dark, 
Sunk in the loins, peering into the day. 

95 



John Their judgment wry he counted not for wrong 

Drinkwater More than the fabled poison of the toad 

Striking at simple wits; how should their thought 

Or word in praise or blame come near the peace 

That shone in seasonable hours above 

The patience of his spirit's husbandry? 

They fooHsh and not seeing, how should he 

Spend anger there or fear — great ceremonies 

Equal for none save great antagonists ? 

The grave indifference of his heart before them 

Was moved by laughter innocent of hate, 

Chastising clean of spite, that moulded them 

Into the antic likeness of his toad 

Bidding for laughter underneath the leaves. 

He bowed not, nor disputed, but he saw 

Those ill-created joyless gods, and loathed, 

And saw them creeping, creeping round the walls, 

Death breeding death, wile witnessing to wile. 

And sickened at the dull iniquity 

Should be rewarded, and for ever breathe 

Contagion on the folk gathered in prayer. 

His truth should not be doomed to march among 

This falsehood to the ages. He was called, 

And he must labour there ; if so the king 

Would grant it, where the pillars bore the roof 

A galleried way of meditation nursed 

Secluded time, with wall of ready stone 

In panels for the carver set between 

The windows — there his chisel should be set, — 

It was his plea. And the king spoke of him, 

Scorning, as one lack- fettle, among all these 

Eager to take the riches of renown; 

One fearful of the light or knowing nothing 

Of Hght's dimension, a witling who would throw 

96 



Honour aside and praise spoken aloud Jolm 

All men of heart should covet. Let him go Drinkwater 

Grubbing out of the sight of those who knew 

The worth of substance; there was his proper trade. 

A squat and curious toad indeed. . . . The eyes, 
Patient and grey, were dumb as were the lips. 
That, fixed and governed, hoarded from them all 
The larger laughter lifting in his heart. 
Straightway about his gallery he moved, 
Measured the windows and the virgin stone. 
Till all was weighed and patterned in his brain. 
Then first where most the shadows struck the wall. 
Under the sills, and centre of the base. 
From floor to sill out of the stone was wooed 
Memorial folly, as from the chisel leapt 
His chastening laughter searching priest and king — ■ 
A huge and wrinkled toad, with legs asplay, 
And belly loaded, leering with great eyes 
Busily fixed upon the void. 

All days 
His chisel was the first to ring across 
The temple's quiet; and at fall of dusk 
Passing among the carvers homeward, they 
Would speak of him as mad, or weak against 
The challenge of the world, and let him go 
Lonely, as was his will, under the night 
Of stars or cloud or summer's folded sun, 
Through crop and wood and pastureland to sleep. 
None took the narrow stair as wondering 
How did his chisel prosper in the stone, 
Unvisited his labour and forgot. 
And times when he would lean out of his height 
And watch the gods growing along the walls, 

97 



John The row of carvers in their Unen coats 

Drinkwater Took in his vision a virtue that alone 

Carving they had not nor the thing they carved. 

Knowing the health that flowed about his close 

Imagining, the daily quiet won 

From process of his clean and supple craft, 

Those carvers there, far on the floor below. 

Would haply be transfigured in his thought 

Into a gallant company of men 

Glad of the strict and loyal reckoning 

That proved in the just presence of the brain 

Each chisel-stroke. How surely would he prosper 

In pleasant talk at easy hours with men 

So fashioned if it might be — and his eyes 

Would pass again to those dead gods that grew 

In spreading evil round the temple walls; 

And, one dead pressure made, the carvers moved 

Along the waU to mould and mould again 

The self-same god, their chisels on the stone 

Tapping in dull precision as before. 

And he would turn, back to his lonely truth. 

He carved apace. And first his people's gods. 
About the toad, out of their sterile time. 
Under his hand thrilled and were recreate. 
The bull, the pard, the camel and the ram, 
Tiger and owl and bat — all were the signs 
Visibly made body on the stone 
Of sightless thought adventuring the host 
That is mere spirit; these the bloom achieved 
By secret labour in the flowing wood 
Of rain and air and wind and continent sun. . . . 
His tiger, lithe, immobile in the stone, 
A swift destruction for a moment leashed, 
Sprang crying from the jealous stealth of men 

98 



Opposed in cunning watch, with engines hid John 

Of torment and calamitous desire. Drinkwater 

His leopard, swift on lean and paltry limbs. 

Was fear in flight before accusing faith. 

His bull, with eyes that often in the dusk 

Would lift from the sweet meadow grass to watch 

Him homeward passing, bore on massy beam 

The burden of the patient of the earth. 

His camel bore the burden of the damned, 

Being gaunt, with eyes aslant along the nose. 

He had a friend, who hammered bronze and iron 

And cupped the moonstone on a silver ring. 

One constant like himself, would come at night 

Or bid him as a guest, when they would make 

Their poets touch a starrier height, or search 

Together with unparsimonious mind 

The crowded harbours of mortality. 

And there were jests, wholesome as harvest ale. 

Of homely habit, bred of hearts that dared 

Judgment of laughter under the eternal eye: 

This frolic wisdom was his carven owl. 

His ram was lordship on the lonely hills, 

Alert and fleet, content only to know 

The wind mightily pouring on his fleece. 

With yesterday and all unrisen suns 

Poorer than disinherited ghosts. His bat 

Was ancient envy made a mockery. 

Cowering below the newer eagle carved 

Above the arches with wide pinion spread, 

His faith's dominion of that happy dawn. 

And so he wrought the gods upon the wall. 
Living and crying out of his desire. 
Out of his patient incorruptible thought, 
Wrought them in joy was wages to his faith. 

99 



John And other than the gods he made. The stalks 

Drinkwater Of bluebells heavy with the news of spring, 
The vine loaded with plenty of the year, 
And swallows, merely tenderness of thought 
Bidding the stone to small and fragile flight; 
Leaves, the thin relics of autumnal boughs, 
Or massed in June. . . . 

All from their native pressure bloomed and sprang 
Under his shaping hand into a proud 
And governed image of the central man, — 
Their moulding, charts of all his travelling. 
And all were deftly ordered, duly set 
Between the windows, underneath the sills. 
And roofward, as a motion rightly planned, 
Till on the wall, out of the sullen stone, 
A glory blazed, his vision manifest. 
His wonder captive. And he was content. 

And when the builders and the carvers knew 

Their labours done, and high the temple stood 

Over the cornlands, king and counsellor 

And priest and chosen of the people came 

Among a ceremonial multitude 

To dedication. And, below the thrones 

Where king and archpriest ruled above the throng, 

Highest among the ranked artificers 

The carvers stood. And when, the temple vowed 

To holy use, tribute and choral praise 

Given as was ordained, the king looked down 

Upon the gathered folk, and bade them see 

The comely gods fashioned about the walls, 

And keep in honour men whose precious skill 

Could so adorn the sessions of their worship. 

Gravely the carvers bowed them to the ground. 

Only the man with wide and patient eyes 

100 



Stood not among them ; nor did any come John 

To count his labour, where he watched alone Drinkwater 

Above the coloured throng. He heard, and looked 

Again upon his work, and knew it good. 

Smiled on his toad, passed down the stair unseen, 

And sang across the teeming meadows home. 



loi 



JAMES ELROY FLECKER 



THE OLD SHIPS James 

Elroy 
I have seen old ships sail hke swans asleep Flecker 

Beyond the village which men still call Tyre, 
With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep 
For Famagusta and the hidden sun 
That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire; 
And all those ships w^ere certainly so old — 
Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, 
Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, 
The pirate Genoese 
Hell-raked them till they rolled 
Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. 
But now through friendly seas they softly run, 
Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green, 
Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold. 

But I have seen 

Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn 

And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay 

A drowsy ship of some yet older day; 

And, wonder's breath indrawn. 

Thought I — who knows — who knows — but in that 

same 
(Fished up beyond Aeaea, patched up new 
— Stern painted brighter blue — ) 
That talkative, bald-headed seaman came 
(Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) 
From Troy's doom-crimson shore, 
And with great lies about his wooden horse 
Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course. 

It v/as so old a ship — who knows, who knows? 
— And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain 
To see the mast burst open with a rose. 
And the whole deck put on its leaves again. 



James 
Elroy 
Flecker 



A FRAGMENT 

pouring westering streams 

Shouting that I have leapt the mountain bar, 
Down curveoncurvemyjourney's white way gleams 
My road along the river of return. 

1 know the countries where the white moons burn, 
And heavy star on star 

Dips on the pale and crystal desert hills. 

I know the river of the sun that fills 

With founts of gold the lakes of Orient sky. 



And I have heard a voice of broken seas 

And from the cliffs a cry. 

Ah still they learn, those cave-eared Cyclades, 

The Triton's friendly or his fearful horn, 

And why the deep sea-bells but seldom chime, 

Andhow those waves and with what spell-swept rhyme 

In years of morning, on a summer's morn 

Whispering round his castle on the coast, 

Lured young Achilles from his haunted sleep 

And drave him out to dive beyond those deep 

Dim purple windows of the empty swell. 

His ivory body flitting like a ghost 

Over the holes where flat blind fishes dwell. 

All to embrace his mother throned in her shell. 



io6 



SANTORIN James 

{A Legend of the Aegean) Elro/ 

Flecker 

' Who are you, Sea Lady, 

And where in the seas are we ? 

I have too long been steering 

By the flashes in your eyes. 

Why drops the moonlight through my heart, 

And why so quietly 

Go the great engines of my boat 

As if their souls were free? ' 

' Oh ask me not, bold sailor; 

Is not your ship a magic ship 

That sails without a sail : 

Are not these isles the Isles of Greece 

And dust upon the sea? 

But answer me three questions 

And give me answers three. 

What is your ship? ' ' A British.' 

* And where may Britain be? ' 

* Oh it lies north, dear lady; 
It is a small country.' 

' Yet you will know my lover, 

Though you live far away : 

And you will whisper where he has gone. 

That hly boy to look upon 

And whiter than the spray.' 

* How should I know your lover, 
Lady of the sea? ' 

' Alexander, Alexander, 
The King of the World was he.' 
' Weep not for him, dear lady, 
But come aboard my ship. 
So many years ago he died, 
He's dead as dead can be.' 

107 



James 
Elroy 
Flecker 



' O base and brutal sailor 

To lie this lie to me. 

His mother was the foam-foot 

Star-sparkling Aphrodite; 

His father was Adonis 

Who lives away in Lebanon, 

In stony Lebanon, where blooms 

His red anemone. 

But where is Alexander, 

The soldier Alexander, 

My golden love of olden days 

The King of the world and mer * 



She sank into the moonlight 
And the sea was only sea. 



1 08 



YASMIN James 

A Ghazel ^l^^X 

Flecker 

liovv splendid in the morning glows the lily: with 

what grace he throws 
His supplication to the rose: do roses nod the head, 

Yasmin? 

But when the silver dove descends I find the little 

flower of friends 
Whose very name that sweetly ends I say when I 

have said, Yasmin. 

The morning light is clear and cold: 1 dare not in 

that light behold 
A whiter light, a deeper gold, a glory too far shed, 

Yasmin. 

But when the deep red eye of day is level with the 

lone highway, 
And some to Meccah turn to pray, and I toward thy 

bed, Yasmin; 

Or when the wind beneath the moon is drifting like 

a soul aswoon. 
And harping planets talk love's tune with milky 

Vv'ings outspread, Yasmin, 

Shower down thy love, O burning bright! For one 

night or the other night 
Will come the Gardener in white, and gathered 

flowers are dead, Yasmin. 



109 



James GATES OF DAMASCUS 

Elroy 

Flecker Four great gates has the city of Damascus, 

And four Grand Wardens, on their spears re- 
cHning, 
All day long stand like tall stone men 

And sleep on the towers when the moon is 
shining. 

This is the song of the East Gate Warden 
When he locks the great gate and smokes in his 
garden. 

Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, 

Fort of Fear, 
The Portal of Bagdad am I, the Doorway of Diar- 

bekir. 

The Persian dawn with new desires may net the 

flushing mountain spires, 
But my gaunt buttress still rejects the supplianceof 

those mellow fires. 

Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. 

Have you heard 
That silence where the birds are dead yet something 

pipeth like a bird? 

Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony 

deserts still a rose 
But with no scarlet to her leaf — and from whose 

heart no perfume flows. 

Wilt thou bloom red where she buds pale, thy sister 
rose? Wilt thou not fail 

When noonday flashes hke a flail? Leave, nightin- 
gale, the Caravan! 

no 



Pass then, pass all! Bagdad! ye cr^, and down the James 

billows of blue sky Elroy 

Ye beat the bell that beats to hell, and who shall Flecker 
thrust ye back? Not I. 

The Sun who flashes through the head and paints 

the shadows green and red — 
The Sun shall eat thy fleshless dead, O Caravan, O 

Caravan ! 

And one who licks his lips for thirst with fevered 

eyes shall face in fear 
The palms that wave, the streams that burst, his 

last mirage, O Caravan I 

And one — the bird- voiced Singing-man — shall fall 

behind thee. Caravan! 
And God shall meet him in the night, and he shall 

sing as best he can. 

And one the Bedouin shall slay, and one, sand- 
stricken on the way. 

Go dark and bhnd ; and one shall say — * How lonely 
is the Caravan ! * 

Pass out beneath, O Caravan, Doom's Caravan, 

Death's Caravan i 
I had not told ye, fools, so much, save that I heard 

your Singing-man. 

^his was sung by the West Gate^s keeper 
When heaven^ s hollow dome grew deeper, 

I am the gate toward the sea : O sailor men, pass out 

from me ! 
I hear you high on Lebanon, singing the marvels of 

the sea. 

Ill 



The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the ser- 
pent-haunted sea, 

The snow-besprinkJed wine of earth, the white-anJ- 
blue-flower foaming sea. 

Beyond the sea are towns with towers, carved with 

Hons and hly flowers, 
And not a soul in all those lonely streets to while 

away the hours. 

Beyond the towns, an isle where, bound, a naked 

giant bites the ground: 
The shadow of a monstrous wing looms on his back : 

and still no sound. 

Beyond the isle a rock that screams like madmen 

shouting in their dreams, 
From whose dark issues night and day blood crashes 

in a thousand streams. 

Beyond the rock is Restful Bay, where no wind 

breathes or ripple stirs. 
And there on Roman ships, they say, stand rows of 

metal mariners. 

Beyond the bay in utmost West old Solomon the 

Jewish King 
Sits with his beard upon his breast, and grips and 

guards his magic ring: 



And when that ring is stolen, he will rise in outraged 

majesty. 
And take the World upon his back, and fling the 

World beyond the sea. 

112 



This is the song of the North Gate's master, James 

Who singeth fast, but drinketh faster. Elroy 

Flecker 

I am the gay Aleppo Gate: a dawn, a dawn and thou 

art there : 
Eat not thy heart with fear and care, O brother of 

the beast we hate! 



Thou hast not many miles to tread, nor other foes 

than fleas to dread; 
Homs shall behold thy morning meal, and Hama see 

thee safe in bed. 

Take to Aleppo filigrane, and take them paste of 

apricots, 
And coffee tables botched with pear], and little 

beaten brassware pots : 

And thou shalt sell thy wares for thrice the Damas- 
cene retailers' price, 

And buy a fat Armenian slave who smelleth odorous 
and nice. 

Some men of noble stock were made : some glory in 
the murder-blade : 

Some praise a Science or an Art, but I like honour- 
able Trade ! 

Sell them the rotten, buy the ripe ! Their heads are 

weak; their pockets burn. 
Aleppo men are mighty fools. Salaam Aleikum ! Safe 

return ! 

113 



James This is the so?ig of the South Gate Holder, 

Elrov A silver man, but his song is older. 



Fleck 



er 



I am the Gate that fears no fall: the Mihrab of 

Damascus wall, 
The bridge of booming Sinai: the Arch of Allah all in 

all. 

O spiritual pilgrim, rise: the night has grown her 

single horn : 
The voices of the souls unborn are half adream with 

Paradise. 

To Meccah thou hast turned in prayer with aching 

heart and eyes that burn : 
Ah, Hajji, whither wilt thou turn when thou art 

there, when thou art there? 

God be thy guide from camp to camp : God be thy 

shade from well to well ; 
God grant beneath the desert stars thou hear the 

Prophet's camel bell. 

And God shall make thy body pure, and give thee 

knowledge to endure 
This ghost-life's piercing phantom-pain, and bring 

thee out to Life again. 

And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen 

thousand Aeons pass. 
And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see 

dew upon the grass. 

And son of Islam, it may be that thou shalt learn at 

journey's end 
Who walks thy garden eve on eve, and bows his head, 

and calls thee Friend. 

114 



THE DYING PATRIOT James 

Elroy 



Day breaks on England down the Kentish hills, 

Singing in the silence of the meadow- footing rills, 

Day of my dreams, O day! 

I saw them march from Dover, long ago. 
With a silver cross before them, singing low. 

Monks of Rome from their home where the blue seas 
break in foam, 
Augustine with his feet of snow. 



Noon strikes on England, noon on Oxford town, 

— Beauty she was statue cold — there's blood upon 

her gown : 
Noon of my dreams, O noon ! 

Proud and godly kings had built her, long ago, 
With her towers and tombs and statues all arow, 
With her fair and floral air and the love that lingers 
there. 
And the streets where the great men go. 

Evening on the olden, the golden sea of Wales, 

When the first star shivers and the last wave pales : 

O evening dreams ! 

There's a house that Britons walked in, long ago, 
Where now the springs of ocean fall and flow, 

And the dead robed in red and sea-lilies overhead 
Sway when the long winds blow. 



Sleep not, my country: though night is here, afar 
Your children of the morning are clamorous for v\ 
Fire in the night, O dreams ! 



Flecker 



115 



James Though she send vou as she sent you, long ago, 

Elroy South to desert, east to ocean, west to snow, 

Flecker West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides 

I must go 
Where the fleet of stars is anchored, and the young 

Star-captains glow. 



Ii6 



WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 



THE GORSE Wilfrid 

Wilson 
In dream, again within the clean, cold hell Gibson 

Of glazed and aching silence he was trapped; 
And, closing in, the blank walls of his cell 
Crushed stifling on him . . . when the bracken 

snapped. 
Caught in his clutching fingers ; and he lay 
Awake upon his back among the fern. 
With free eyes travelling the wide blue day, 
Unhindered, unremembering; while a burn 
Tinkled and gurgled somewhere out of sight, 
Unheard of him; till suddenly aware 
Of its cold music, shivering in the light. 
He raised himself, and with far-ranging stare 
Looked all about him : and with dazed eyes wide 
Saw, still as in a numb, unreal dream, 
Black figures scouring a far hill-side. 
With now and then a sunlit rifle's gleam ; 
And knew the hunt was hot upon his track : 
Yet hardly seemed to mind, somehow, just then . . . 
But kept on wondering why they looked so black 
On that hot hillside, all those little men 
Who scurried round like beetles — twelve, all told . . . 
He counted them twice over; and began 
A third time reckoning them, but could not hold 
His starved wits to the business, while they ran 
So brokenly, and always stuck at * five ' . . . 
And * One, two, three, four, five,' a dozen times 
He muttered. . . . ' Can you catch a fish alive? ' 
Sang mocking echoes of old nursery rhymes 
Through the strained, tingling hollow of his head» 
And now, almost remembering, he was stirred 
To pity them; and wondered if they'd fed 
Since he had, or if, ever since they'd heard 

119 



Wilfrid Two nights ago the sudden signal-gun 
Wilson That raised alarm of his escape, they too 

Gibson Had fasted in the wilderness, and run 

With nothing but the thirsty wind to chew, 

And nothing in their bellies but a fill 

Of cold peat- water, till their heads were light 

The crackling of a rifle on the hill 

Rang in his ears : and stung to headlong flight, 

He started to his feet ; and through the brake 

He plunged in panic, heedless of the sun 

That burned his cropped head to a red-hot ache 

Still racked with crackling echoes of the gun. 

Then suddenly the sun-enkindled fire 

Of gorse upon the moor-top caught his eye : 

And that gold glow held all his heart's desire. 

As, like a witless, flame-bewildered fly, 

He blundered towards the league-wide yellow blaze. 

And tumbled headlong on the spikes of bloom; 

And rising, bruised and bleeding and adaze, 

Struggled through clutching spines; the dense, 

sweet fume 
Of nutty, acrid scent like poison stealing 
Through his hot blood ; the bristling yellow glare 
Spiking his eyes with fire, till he went reeling, 
Stifled and blinded, on — and did not care 
Though he were taken — wandering round and round, 
* Jerusalem the Golden ' quavering shrill. 
Changing his tune to ' Tommy Tiddler's Ground ' : 
Till, just a lost child on that dazzling hill. 
Bewildered in a glittering golden maze 
Of stinging scented fire, he dropped, quite done, 
A shrivelling wisp within a world ablaze 
Beneath a blinding sky, one blaze of sun. 

120 



HOOPS Wilfrid 

Wilson 
Scene: The big tent-stable of a travelling circus. On the Gibson 
ground near the entrance GENTLEMAN 
JOHN, stableman and general odd-job man, lies 
smoking beside MERRT ANDREW, the clown. 
GENTLEMAN JOHN is a little hunched man 
with a sensitive face and dreamy eyes. MERRT 
ANDREW, who is resting between the afternoon 
and evening performances, with his clown's hat 
lying beside him, wears a crimson wig, and a 
baggy suit of orange- coloured cotton, patterned 
with purple cats. His face is chalked dead-white, 
and painted with a set grin, so that it is impossible 
to see what manner of man he is. hi the back- 
ground are camels and elephants feeding, dimly 
visible in the steamy dusk of the tent. 

Gentleman John 

And then consider camels : only think 

Of camels long enough, and you'ld go mad — 

With all their humps and lumps; their knobbly 

knees, 
Splay feet, and straddle legs ; their sagging necks, 
Flat flanks, and scraggy tails, and monstrous teeth. 
Pve not forgotten the first fiend I met : 
'Twas in a lane in Smyrna, just a ditch 
Between the shuttered houses, and so narrow 
The brute's bulk blocked the road; the huge green 

stack 
Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath 
Brushing the yellow walls on either hand. 
And shutting out the strip of burning blue : 
And I'd to face that vicious bobbing head 
With evil eyes, slack lips, and nightmare teeth, 

121 



Wilfrid And duck beneath the snaky, squirming iieck, 

Wilson Pranked with its silly string of bright blue beads, 

Gibson That seemed to wriggle every way at once, 

As though it were a hydra. Allah's beard ! 
But I was scared, and nearly turned and ran : 
I felt that muzzle take me by the scruff. 
And heard those murderous teeth crunching my 

spine. 
Before I stooped — though I dodged safely under. 
I've always been afraid of ugliness. 
I'm such a toad myself, I hate all toads; 
And the camel is the ugliest toad of all, 
To my mind ; and it's just my devil's luck 
I've come to this — to be a camel's lackey. 
To fetch and carry for original sin, 
For'sure enough, the camel's old evil incarnate. 
Blue beads and amulets to ward off evil! 
No eye's more evil than a camel's eye. 
The elephant is quite a comely brute. 
Compared with Satan camel, — trunk and all, 
His floppy ears, and his inconsequent tail. 
He's stolid, but at least a gentleman. 
It doesn't hurt my pride to valet him. 
And bring his shaving- water. He's a lord. 
Only the bluest blood that has come down 
Through generations from the mastodon 
Could carry off that tail with dignity. 
That tail and trunk. He cannot look absurd. 
For all the monkey tricks you put him through. 
Your paper hoops and popguns. He just makes 
His masters look ridiculous, when his pomp's 
Butchered to make a bumpkin's holiday. 
He's dignity itself, and proper pride. 
That stands serenely in a circus-world 
Of mountebanks and monkeys. He has weight 

122 



Behind him : aeons of primeval power Wilfrid 

Have shaped that pillared bulk; and he stands sure, Wilson 

Solid, substantial on the world's foundations. Gibson 

And he has form, form that's too big a thing 

To be called beauty. Once, long since, I thought 

To be a poet, and shape words, and mould 

A poem like an elephant, huge, sublime, 

To front oblivion; and because I failed. 

And all my rhymes were gawky, shambling camels. 

Or else obscene, blue-buttocked apes, I'm doomed 

To lackey it for things such as I've made. 

Till one of them crunches my backbone with his 

teeth. 
Or knocks my wind out with a forthright kick 
Clean in the midriff, crumpling up in death 
The hunched and stunted body that was me — 
John, the apostle of the Perfect Form ! 
Jerusalem ! I'm talking like a book — 
As you would say: and a bad book at that, 
A maundering, kiss-mammy book — The Hunch- 
back's End 
Or The Camel-Keeper's Reward — would be its 

title. 
I froth and bubble like a new-broached cask. 
No wonder you look glum, for all your grin. 
What makes you mope? You've naught to growse 

about. 
You've got no hump. Your body's brave and 

straight — 
So shapely even that you can afford 
To trick it in fantastic shapelessness. 
Knowing that there's a clean-Hmbed man beneath 
Preposterous pantaloons and purple cats. 
I would have been a poet, if I could : 
But better than shaping poems 'twould have been 

123 



Wilfrid 
Wilson 
Gibson 



To have had a comely body and clean limbs 
Obedient to my bidding. 



I missed a hoop 
Gentleman John You missed a hoop ? You mean 



Merry Andrew 
This afternoon 



Merry Andrew 

That I am done, used up, scrapped, on the shelf, 



Out of the running- 



-only that, no more. 



Gentleman John 

Well, I've been missing hoops my whole life long; 
Though, when I come to think of it, perhaps 
There's little consolation to be chewed 
From crumbs that I can offer. 

Merry Andrew I've not missed 

A hoop since I was six. I'm forty-two. 
This is the first time that my body's failed me : 
But 'twill not be the last. And . . . 

Gentleman John Such is life ! 

You're going to say. You see I've got it pat, 
Your jaded wheeze. Lord, what a wit I'ld make 
If I'd a set grin painted on my face. 
And such is Hfe, I'ld say a hundred times, 
And each time set the world aroar afresh 
At my original humour. Missed a hoop ! 
Why, man alive, you've naught to grumble at. 
I've boggled every hoop since I was six. 
I'm fifty-five; and I've run round a ring 
Would make this potty circus seem a pinhole. 
I wasn't born to sawdust. I'd the world 
For circus . . . 



124 



Merry Andrew It's no time for crowing now. Wilfrid 

I know a gentleman, and take on trust Wilson 

The silver spoon and all. My teeth were cut Gibson 

Upon a horseshoe : and I wasn't born 
To purple and fine linen — but to sawdust, 
To sawdust, as you say — brought up on sawdust. 
I've had to make my daily bread of sawdust : 
Ay, and my children's, — children's, that's the rub. 
As Shakespeare says . . . 

Gentleman John Ah, there you go again ! 

What a rare wit to set the ring aroar — 
As Shakespeare says! Crowing? A gentleman? 
Man, didn't you say you'd never missed a hoop? 
It's only gentlemen who miss no hoops, 
Clean livers, easy lords of life who take 
Each obstacle at a leap, who never fail. 
You are the gentleman. 

Merry Andrew Now don't you try 

Being funny at my expense; or you'll soon find 
I'm not quite done for yet — not quite snuffed out. 
There's stiU a spark of life. You may have words : 
But I've a fist will be a match for them. 
Words slaver freely from a broken jaw. 
I've always lived straight, as a man must do 
In my profession, if he'ld keep in fettle : 
But I'm no gentleman, for I fail to see 
There's any sport in baiting a poor man 
Because he's losing grip at forty- two. 
And sees his livelihood slipping from his grasp — 
Ay, and his children's bread. 

Gentleman John Why, man alive, 

Who's baiting you ? This winded, broken cur, 

125 



Wilfrid That limps through life, to bait a bull like you ! 

Wilson You don't want pity, man ! The beaten bull, 

Gibson Even when the dogs are tearing at his gullet, 

Turns no eye up for pity. I myself. 
Crippled and hunched and twisted as I am. 
Would make a brave fend to stand up to you 
Until you swallowed your words, if you should 

slobber 
Your pity over me. A bull ! Nay, man, 
You're nothing but a bear with a sore head. 
A bee has stung you — you who've Hved on honey. 
Sawdust, forsooth ! You've had the sweet of life : 
You've munched the honeycomb till . . . 

Merry Andrew Ay! talk's cheap. 

But you've no children. You don't understand. 

Gentleman John 

I have no children: I don't understand! 

Merry Andrew 

It's children make the difference. 

Gentleman John Man alive — 

Alive and kicking, though you're shamming 

dead — 
You've hit the truth at last. It's that, just that. 
Makes all the difference. If you hadn't children, 
rid find it in my heart to pity you. 
Granted you'ld let me. I don't understand! 
I've seen you stripped. I've seen your children 

stripped. 
You've never seen me naked; but you can guess 
The misstitched, gnarled, and crooked thing I am. 
Now, do you understand? I may have w^ords. 

126 



But you, man, do you never burn with pride Wilfrid 

That you've begotten those six limber bodies, Wilson 

Firm flesh, and supple sinew, and lithe limb — Gibson 

Six nimble lads, each like young Absalom, 

With red blood running lively in his veins, 

Bone of your bone, your very flesh and blood? 

It's you don't understand. God, what Fid give 

This moment to be you, just as you are. 

Preposterous pantaloons, and purple cats. 

And painted leer, and crimson curls, and all — 

To be you now, with only one missed hoop. 

If I'd six clean-limbed children of my loins. 

Born of the ecstasy of life vvdthin me. 

To keep it quick and valiant in the ring 

\Vhen I . . . but I . . . Man, man, you've missed a 

hoop; 
But they'll take every hoop like blooded colts : 
And 'twill be you in them that leaps through life. 
And in their children, and their children's children. 
God ! doesn't it make you hold your breath to think 
There'll always be an Andrew in the ring, 
The very spit and image of you stripped, 
While life's old circus lasts? And I ... at least 
There is no twisted thing of my begetting 
To keep my shame alive : and that's the most 
That I've to pride myself upon. But, God, 
I'm proud, ay, proud as Lucifer, of that. 
Think what it means, with all the urge and sting. 
When such a lust of Hfe runs in the veins. 
You, with your six sons, and your one missed hoop, 
Put that thought in your pipe and smoke it. Well, 
And how d'you like the flavour? Something bitter? 
And burns the tongue a trifle? That's the brand 
That I must smoke while I've the breath to puff". 

(Pause.) 



Wilfrid I've always worshipped the body, all my life — 

Wilson The body, quick with the perfect health which is 

Gibson beauty, 

Lively, lissom, alert, and taking its way 

Through the world with the easy gait of the early 

gods. 
The only moments Pve lived my life to the full 
And that live again in remembrance unfaded are 

those 
When I've seen life compact in some perfect body, 
The living God made manifest in man : 
A diver in the Mediterranean, resting. 
With sleeked black hair, and glistening salt-tanned 

skin, 
Gripping the quivering gunwale with tense 

hands, 
His torso lifted out of the peacock sea, 
Like Neptune, carved in amber, come to life: 
A stark Egyptian on the Nile's edge poised 
Like a bronze Osiris against the lush, rank green : 
A fisherman dancing reels, on New Year's Eve, 
In a hall of shadowy rafters and flickering lights. 
At St Abbs on the Berwickshire coast, to the skirl 

of the pipes. 
The lift of the wave in his heels, the sea in his 

veins : 
A Cherokee Indian, as though he were one with 

his horse. 
His coppery shoulders agleam, his feathers aflame 
With the last of the sun, descending a gulch in 

Alaska ; 
A brawny Cleveland puddler, stripped to the 

loins. 
On the cauldron's brink, stirring the molten iron 
In the white-hot glow, a man of white-hot metal: 

128 



A Cornish ploughboy driving an easy share Wilfrid 

Through the grey, Hght soil of a headland, against Wilson 

a sea Gibson 

Of sapphire, gay in his new white corduroys. 
Blue-eyed, dark-haired, and whistling a careless 

tune: 
Jack Johnson, stripped for the ring, in his swarthy 

pride 
Of sleek and rippling muscle . . . 

Merry Andrew Jack's the boy ! 

Ay, he's the proper figure of a man. 
But he'll grow fat and flabby and scant of breath. 
He'll miss his hoop some day. 

Gentleman John But what are words 

To shape the joy of form? The Greeks did best 
To cut in marble or to cast in bronze 
Their ecstasy of living. I remember 
A marvellous Hermes that I saw in Athens, 
Fished from the very bottom of the deep 
Where he had lain two thousand years or more, 
Wrecked with a galleyful of Roman pirates. 
Among the white bones of his plunderers 
Whose flesh had fed the fishes as they sank — 
Serene in cold, imperishable beauty, 
Biding his time, till he should rise again, 
Exultant from the wave, for all men's worship. 
The morning-spring of life, the youth of the 

world, 
Shaped in sea-coloured bronze for everlasting. 
Ay, the Greeks knew: but men have forgotten now. 
Not easily do we meet beauty walking 
The world to-day in all the body's pride. 
That's why I'm here — a stable-boy to camels — 

129 



Wilfrid For in the circus-ring there's more delight 

Wilson Of seemly bodies, goodly in sheer health, 

Gibson Bodies trained and tuned to the perfect pitch, 

Eager, blithe, debonair, from head to heel 
Aglow and alive in every pulse, than elsewhere 
In this machine-ridden land of grimy, glum 
Round-shouldered, coughing mechanics. Once I 

lived 
In London, in a slum called Paradise, 
Sickened to see the greasy pavements crawling 
With puny flabby babies, thick as maggots. 
Poor brats ! Fid soon go mad if I'd to live 
In London, with its stunted men and women 
But Httle better to look on than myself. 

Yet, there's an island where the men keep fit — 

St Kilda's, a stark fastness of high crag : 

They must keep fit or famish : their main food 

The Solan goose; and it's a chancy job 

To swing down a sheer face of slippery granite 

And drop a noose over the sentinel bird 

Ere he can squawk to rouse the sleeping flock. 

They must keep fit — their bodies taut and trim — 

To have the nerve: and they're like tempered steel, 

Suppled and fined. But even they've grown slacker 

Through traflSic with the mainland, in these days. 

A hundred years ago, the custom held 

That none should take a wife till he had stood. 

His left heel on the dizziest point of crag. 

His right leg and both arms stretched in mid air, 

Above the sea : three hundred feet to drop 

To death, if he should fail — a Spartan test. 

But any man who could have failed, would scarce 

Have earned his livelihood or his children's bread 

On that bleak rock. 

130 



Merry Andrew {drowsily) Wilfrid 

Ay, children — that's it, children ! Wilson 



Gentleman John 

St Kilda's children had a chance, at least, 
With none begotten idly of weakling fathers. 
A Spartan test for fatherhood ! Should thev miss 
Their hoop, 'twas death, and childless. You have 

still 
Six lives to take unending hoops for you. 
And you yourself are not done yet 

Merry Andrew {more drowsily) Not yet. 

And there's much comfort in the thought of 

children. 
They're bonnie boys enough ; and should do well. 
If I can but keep going a little while, 
A little longer till . . . 

Gentleman John Six strapping sons ! 

And I have naught but camels. 

{Pause.) 
Yet, I've seen 
A vision in this stable that puts to shame 
Each ecstasy of mortal flesh and blood 
That's been my eyes' delight. I never breathed 
A word of it to man or woman yet : 
I couldn't whisper it now to you, if you looked 
Like any human thing this side of death. 
'Twas on the night I stumbled on the circus. 
I'd wandered all day, lost among the fells. 
Over snow-smothered hills, through blinding 

blizzard. 
Whipped by a wind that seemed to strip and skin 

me, 

131 



Gibson 



Wilfrid Till I was one numb ache of sodden ice. 

Wilson Quite done, and drunk with cold, Fid soon have 

Gibson dropped 

Dead in a ditch; when suddenly a lantern 

Dazzled my eyes. I smelt a queer warm smell ; 

And felt a hot puffin my face; and blundered 

Out of the flurry of snow and raking wind 

Dizzily into a glowing Arabian night 

Of elephants and camels having supper. 

I thought that Fd gone mad, stark, staring mad; 

But I was much too sleepy to mind just then — 

Dropped dead asleep upon a truss of hay; 

And lay, a log, till — well, I cannot tell 

How long I lay unconscious. I but know 

I slept, and wakened, and that 'twas no dream. 

I heard a rustle in the hay beside me. 

And opening sleepy eyes, scarce marvelHng, 

I saw her, standing naked in the lamplight, 

Beneath the huge tent's cavernous canopy, 

Against the throng of elephants and camels 

That champed unwondering in the golden dusk. 

Moon-white Diana, mettled Artemis — 

Her body, quick and tense as her own bowstring. 

Her spirit, an arrow barbed and strung for flight — 

White snowflakes melting on her night-black 

hair, 
And on her glistening breasts and supple thighs : 
Her red lips parted, her keen eyes alive 
With fierce, far-ranging hungers of the chase 
Over the hills of morn . . . The lantern guttered 
And I was left alone in the outer darkness 
Among the champing elephants and camels. 
And Fll be a camel-keeper to the end: 
Though never again my eyes . . . 

{Pause.) 
132 



So 70U can sleep, Wilfrid 

You Merry Andrew, for all you missed your hoop. Wilson 

It's just as well, perhaps. Now I can hold Gibson 
My secret to the end. Ah, here they come ! 

(Six lads, between the ages oj three and twelve^ clad in 
pink tights covered zvith silver spangles, tumble 
into the tent,) 

The Eldest Boy 

Daddy, the bell's rung, and . . . 

Gentleman John He's snoozing sound. 

{to the youngest boy) 
You just creep quietly, and take tight hold 
Of the crimson curls, and tug, and you will hear 
The purple pussies all caterwaul at once. 



133 



Wilfrid THE GOING 

Wilson n D 

Gibson 

He's gone. 

I do not understand. 

I only know 

That as he turned to go 

And waved his hand, 

In his young eyes a sudden glory shone. 

And I was dazzled with a sunset glow, 

And he was gone. 



134 



RALPH HODGSON 



THE BULL Ralph 

Hodgson 
See an old unhappy bull, 
Sick in soul and body both, 
Slouching in the undergrowth 
Of the forest beautiful. 
Banished from the herd he led, 
Bulls and cows a thousand head. 

Cranes and gaudy parrots go 

Up and down the burning sky; 

Tree-top cats purr drowsily 

In the dim-day green below; 

And troops of monkeys, nutting, some, 

All disputing, go and come ; 

And things abominable sit 
Picking offal buck or swine, 
On the mess and over it 
Burnished flies and beetles shine, 
And spiders big as bladders lie 
Under hemlocks ten foot high; 

And a dotted serpent curled 
Round and round and round a tree, 
Yellowing its greenery. 
Keeps a watch on all the world, 
All the world and this old bull 
In the forest beautiful. 

Bravely by his fall he came : 

One he led, a bull of blood 

Newly come to lustihood. 

Fought and put his prince to shame, 

Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head 

Tameless even while it bled. 

137 



Ralph There they left him, every one, 

Hodgson Left him there without a Hck, 

Left him for the birds to pick, 
Left him there for carrion, 
Vilely from their bosom cast 
Wisdom, worth and love at last. 

When the lion left his lair 

And roared his beauty through the hills, 

And the vultures pecked their quills 

And flew into the middle air. 

Then this prince no more to reign 

Came to life and lived again. 

He snuffed the herd in far retreat, 
He saw the blood upon the ground. 
And snuffed the burning airs around 
Still with beevish odours sweet. 
While the blood ran down his head 
And his mouth ran slaver red. 

Pity him, this fallen chief. 

All his splendour, all his strength, 

AH his body's breadth and length 

Dwindled down with shame and grief, 

Half the bull he was before, 

Bones and leather, nothing more. 

See him standing dewlap-deep 
In the rushes at the lake, 
Surly, stupid, half asleep. 
Waiting for his heart to break 
And the birds to join the flies 
Feasting at his bloodshot eyes, — 

i;8 



Standing with his head hung down Ralph 

In a stupor, dreaming things : Hodgson 

Green savannas, jungles brown, 
Battlefields and bellowings, 
Bulls undone and lions dead 
And vultures flapping overhead. 

Dreaming things : of days he spent 
With his mother gaunt and lean 
In the valley warm and green, 
Full of baby wonderment, 
Blinking out of silly eyes 
At a hundred mysteries ; 

Dreaming over once again 
How he wandered with a throng 
Of bulls and cows a thousand strong, 
Wandered on from plain to plain, 
Up the hill and down the dale. 
Always at his mother's tail ; 

How he lagged behind the herd. 
Lagged and tottered, weak of limb. 
And she turned and ran to him 
Blaring at the loathly bird 
Stationed always in the skies. 
Waiting for the flesh that dies. 

Dreaming maybe of a day 
When her drained and drying paps 
Turned him to the sweets and saps, 
Richer fountains by the way. 
And she left the bull she bore 
And he looked to her no more; 

139 



Ralph And his Httle frame grew stout, 

Hodgson And his httle legs grew strong, 

And the way was not so long; 
And his little horns came out, 
And he played at butting trees 
And boulder-stones and tortoises, 

Joined a game of knobby skulls 
With the youngsters of his year. 
All the other httle bulls. 
Learning both to bruise and bear, 
Learning how to stand a shock 
Like a little bull of rock. 

Dreaming of a day less dim, 
Dreaming of a time less far, 
When the faint but certain star 
Of destiny burned clear for him. 
And a fierce and wild unrest 
Broke the quiet of his breast, 

And the gristles of his youth 
Hardened in his comely pow. 
And he came to fighting growth. 
Beat his bull and won his cow, 
And flew his tail and trampled off 
Past the tallest, vain enough. 

And curved about in splendour full 
And curved again and snuflfed the airs 
As who should say Come out who dares ! 
And aU beheld a bull, a BuU, 
And knew that here was surely one 
That backed for no bull, fearing none. 

140 



And the leader of the herd Ralph 

Looked and saw, and beat the ground, Hodgson 

And shook the forest with his sound, 
Bellowed at the loathly bird 
Stationed always in the skies, 
Waiting for the flesh that dies. 

Dreaming, this old bull forlorn, 
Surely dreaming of the hour 
When he came to sultan power, 
And they owned him master-horn, 
Chiefest bull of all among 
Bulls and cows a thousand strong. 

And in all the tramping herd 
Not a bull that barred his way, 
Not a cow that said him nay. 
Not a bull or cow that erred 
In the furnace of his look 
Dared a second, worse rebuke ; 

Not in all the forest wide, 
Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen. 
Not another dared him then. 
Dared him and again defied ; 
Not a sovereign buck or boar 
Came a second time for more. 

Not a serpent that survived 
Once the terrors of his hoof 
Risked a second time reproof, 
Came a second time and lived. 
Not a serpent in its skin 
Came again for discipline; 

141 



Ralph Not a leopard bright as flame, 

Hodgson Flashing fingerhooks of steel, 

That a wooden tree might feel, 
Met his fury once and came 
For a second reprimand. 
Not a leopard in the land. 

Not a lion of them all. 
Not a lion of the hills, 
Hero of a thousand kills, 
Dared a second fight and fall, 
Dared that ram terrific twice. 
Paid a second time the price. . . . 

Pitj him, this dupe of dream, 
Leader of the herd again 
Only in his daft old brain, 
Once again the bull supreme 
And bull enough to bear the part 
Only in his tameless heart. 

Pity him that he must wake ; 
Even now the swarm of flies 
Blackening his bloodshot eyes 
Bursts and blusters round the lake, 
Scattered from the feast half-fed, 
By great shadows overhead. 

And the dreamer turns away 
From his visionary herds 
And his splendid yesterday, 
Turns to meet the loathly birds 
Flocking round him from the skies. 
Waiting for the flesh that dies. 

142 



THE SONG OF HONOUR Ralph 

Hodgson 
I climbed a hill as light fell short, 
And rooks came home in scramble sort, 
And filled the trees and flapped and fought 
And sang themselves to sleep ; 
An owl from nowhere with no sound 
Swung by and soon was nowhere found, 
I heard him calling half-way round, 
Holloing loud and deep ; 
A pair of stars, faint pins of light. 
Then many a star, sailed into sight. 
And all the stars, the flower of night, 
Were round me at a leap ; 
To tell how still the valleys lay 
I heard a watchdog miles away. . . . 
x\nd bells of distant sheep. 

I heard no more of bird or bell, 

The mastiff" in a slumber fell, 

I stared into the sky, 

As wondering men have always done 

Since beauty and the stars were one, 

Though none so hard as I. 

It seemed, so still the valleys were. 
As if the whole world knelt at prayer, 
Save me and me alone; 
So pure and wide that silence was 
I feared to bend a blade of grass. 
And there I stood like stone. 

There, sharp and sudden, there I heard — 
Ah ! some wild lovesick singing bird. 
Woke singing in the trees f 

H3 



Ralph ^he nightingale and babble-wren 

Hodgson Were in the English greenwood then, 

And you heard one oj these ? 

The babble-wren and nightingale 

Sang in the Abyssinian vale 

That season of the year! 

Yet, true enough, I heard them plain, 

I heard them both again, again. 

As sharp and sweet and clear 

As if the Abyssinian tree 

Had thrust a bough across the sea, 

Had thrust a bough across to me 

With music for my ear ! 

I heard them both, and oh! I heard 
The song of every singing bird 
That sings beneath the sky, 
And with the song of lark and wren 
The song of mountains, moths and men 
And seas and rainbows vie ! 

I heard the universal choir 

The Sons of Light exalt their Sire 

With universal song, 

Earth's lowliest and loudest notes, 

Her million times ten million throats 

Exalt Him loud and long, 

And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace 

From every part and every place 

Within the shining of His face. 

The universal throng. 

I heard the hymn ol being sound 
From every well of honour found 
In human sense and soul : 
144 



The song of poets when they write Ralph 

The testament of Beautysprite Hodgson 

Upon a flying scroll, 

The song of painters when they take 

A burning brush for Beauty's sake 

And Hmn her features whole — 

The song of men divinely wise 

Who look and see in starry skies 

Not stars so much as robins' eyes, 

And when these pale away 

Hear flocks of shiny pleiades 

Among the plums and apple trees 

Sing in the summer day — 

The song of all both high and low 

To some blest vision true, 

The song of beggars when they throw 

The crust of pity all men owe 

To hungry sparrows in the snow. 

Old beggars hungry too — 

The song of kings of kingdoms when 

They rise above their fortune men. 

And crown themselves anew, — 

The song of courage, heart and will 

And gladness in a fight, 

Of men who face a hopeless hill 

With sparking and delight. 

The bells and bells of song that ring 

Round banners of a cause or king 

From armies bleeding white — 

The song of sailors every one 

When monstrous tide and tempest run 

At ships like bulls at red, 

H5 



Ralph When stately ships are twirled and spun 

Hodgson Like whipping tops and help there's none 

And mighty ships ten thousand ton 
Go down like lumps of lead — 

And song of fighters stern as they 
At odds with fortune night and day, 
Crammed up in cities grim and grey 
As thick as bees in hives, 
Hosannas of a lowly throng 
Who sing unconscious of their song. 
Whose lips are in their Hves — 

And song of some at holy war 

With spells and ghouls more dread by far 

Than deadly seas and cities are, 

Or hordes of quarrelling kings — 

The song of fighters great and small, 

The song of pretty fighters all. 

And high heroic things — 

The song of lovers — who knows how 
Twitched up from place and time 
Upon a sigh, a blush, a vow, 
A curve or hue of cheek or brow. 
Borne up and off from here and now 
Into the void subHme ! 

And crying loves and passions still 
In every key from soft to shrill 
And numbers never done. 
Dog-loyalties to faith and friend, 
And loves like Ruth's of old no end, 
And intermission none — 
146 



And burst on burst for beauty and Ralph 

For numbers not behind, Hodgson 

From men whose love of motherland 

Is like a dog's for one dear hand, 

Sole, selfless, boundless, blind — 

And song of some with hearts beside 

For men and sorrows far and wide, 

Who watch the world with pity and pride 

And warm to all mankind — 

And endless joyous music rise 
From children at their play. 
And endless soaring lullabies 
From happy, happy mothers' eyes, 
And answering crows and baby cries, 
How many who shall say ! 
And many a song as wondrous well 
With pangs and sweets intolerable 
From lonely hearths too gray to tell, 
God knows how utter gray ! 
And song from many a house of care 
When pain has forced a footing there 
And there's a Darkness on the stair 
Will not be turned away — 

And song — that song whose singers come 

With old kind tales of pity from 

The Great Compassion's lips. 

That makes the bells of Heaven to peal 

Round pillows frosty with the feel 

Of Death's cold finger tips — 

The song of men all sorts and kinds. 
As many tempers, moods and minds 
As leaves are on a tree, 

H7 



Ralph As many faiths and castes and creeds, 

Hodgson As many human bloods and breeds 

As in the world may be; 



148 



The song of each and all who gaze 
On Beauty in her naked blaze, 
Or see her dimly in a haze, 
Or get her light in fitful rays 
And tiniest needles even, 
The song of all not wholly dark, 
Not wholly sunk in stupor stark 
Too deep for groping Heaven — 

And alleluias sweet and clear 

And wild with beauty men mishear. 

From choirs of song as near and dear 

To Paradise as they, 

The everlasting pipe and flute 

Of wind and sea and bird and brute. 

And lips deaf men imagine mute 

In wood and stone and clay; 

The music of a lion strong 

That shakes a hill a whole night long, 

A hill as loud as he. 

The twitter of a mouse among 

Melodious greenery, 

The ruby's and the rainbow's song, 

The nightingale's — all three. 

The song of life that wells and flows 

From every leopard, lark and rose 

And everything that gleams or goes 

Lack-lustre in the sea. 

I heard it all, each, every note 

Of every lung and tongue and throat, 

Ay, every rhythm and rhyme 



Of everything that Hves and loves Ralph 

And upw^ard, ever upward moves Hodgson 

From low^ly to sublime ! 

Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light, 

I heard them lift their lyric might 

With each and every chanting sprite 

That lit the sky that v^ondrous night 

As far as eye could climb ! 

I heard it all, I heard the whole 

Harmonious hymn of being roll 

Up through the chapel of my soul 

And at the altar die. 

And in the awful quiet then 

Myself I heard, Amen, Amen, 

Amen I heard me cry! 

I heard it all, and then although 

I caught my flying senses, oh, 

A dizzy man was I ! 

I stood and stared ; the sky was lit, 

The sky was stars all over it, 

I stood, I knew not why. 

Without a wish, without a will, 

I stood upon that silent hill 

And stared into the sky until 

My eyes were blind with stars and still 

I stared into the sky. 



149 



D. H. LAWRENCE 



SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD D. H. 

Lawrence 
Between the avenues of cypresses, 
All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices 
Of linen, go the chaunting choristers. 
The priests in gold and black, the villagers. 

And all along the path to the cemetery 
The round, dark heads of men crowd silently, 
And black-scarved faces of women- folk, wistfully 
Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery. 

And at the foot of a grave a father stands 
With sunken head, and forgotten, folded hands; 
And at the foot of a grave a woman kneels 
With pale shut face, and neither hears nor feels 

The coming of the chaunting choristers 

Between the avenues of cypresses. 
The silence of the many villagers. 
The candle-flames beside the surplices. 



153 



D. H. MEETING AMONG THE MOUNTAINS 

Lawrence 

The little pansies by the road have turned 
Away their purple faces and their gold, 
And evening has taken all the bees from the thyme, 
And all the scent is shed away by the cold. 

Against the hard and pale blue evening sky 
The mountain's new-dropped summer snow is clear 
Glistening in steadfast stillness : like transcendent 
Clean pain sending on us a chill down here. 

Christ ontheCross ! — his beautiful youngman's body 

Has fallen dead upon the nails, and hangs 

White and loose at last, with all the pain 

Drawn on his mouth, eyes broken at last by his pangs. 

And slowly down the mountain road, belated, 

A bullock wagon comes; so I am ashamed 

To gaze any more at the Christ, whom the mountain 

snows 
Whitely confront; I wait on the grass, am lamed. 

The breath of the bullock stains the hard, chill air, 
The band is across its brow, and it scarcely seems 
To draw the load, so still and slow it moves, 
While the driver on the shaft sits crouched in dreams. 

Surely about his sunburnt face is something 
That vexes me with wonder. He sits so still 
Here among all this silence, crouching forward. 
Dreaming and letting the bullock take its will. 

I stand aside on the grass to let them go; 

— And Christ, I have met his accusing eyes again, 



rhe brown eyes black with miseryand hate, that look D. H. 
Full in my own, and the torment starts again. Lawrence 

Dne moment the hate leaps at me standing there, 
3ne moment I see the stillness of agony, 
something frozen in the silence that dare not be 
Loosed, one moment the darkness frightens me. 

rhen among the averted pansies, beneath the high 
iVhite peaks of snow, at the foot of the sunken Christ 
[ stand in a chill of anguish, trying to say 
rhe joy I bought was not too highly priced. 

3ut he has gone, motionless, hating me, 
L-iving as the mountains do, because they are strong, 
^ith a pale, dead Christ on the crucifix of his heart, 
Vnd breathing the frozen memory of his wrong. 

)till in his nostrils the frozen breath of despair, 
\.nd heart like a cross that bears dead agony 
)f naked love, clenched in his fists the shame, 
\jid in his belly the smouldering hate of me. 

^nd I, as I stand in the cold, averted flowers, 

"eel the shame-wounds in his hands pierce through 

my own, 
^nd breathe despair that turns my lungs to stone 
Lnd know the dead Christ weighing on my bone. 



155 



D. H, CRUELTY AND LOVE 

Lawrence 

What large, dark hands are those at the window 
Lifted, grasping in the yellow light 
Which makes its way through the curtain web 
At my heart to-night? 

Ah, only the leaves ! So leave me at rest. 
In the west I see a redness come 
Over the evening's burning breast — 
For now the pain is numb. 

The woodbine creeps abroad 
Calling low to her lover : 

The sunlit flirt who all the day 
Has poised above her lips in play 
And stolen kisses, shallow and gay 
Of dalliance, now has gone away 
— She woos the moth with her sweet, low word, 
And when above her his broad wings hover 
Then her bright breast she will uncover 
And yield her honey-drop to her lover. 



Into the yellow, evening glow 
Saunters a man from the farm below. 
Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed 
Where hangs the swallow's marriage bed. 
The bird lies warm against the wall. 
She glances quick her startled eyes 
Towards him, then she turns away 
Her small head, making warm display 
Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway 
Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball, 

156 



Whose plaintive cries start up as she flies D. H. 

In one blue stoop from out the sties Lawrence 

Into the evening's empty hall. 

Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes 

Hide your quaint, unfading blushes, 

Still your quick tail, and lie as dead. 

Till the distance covers his dangerous tread. 

The rabbit presses back her ears. 
Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes 
And crouches low : then with wild spring 
Spurts from the terror of the oncoming 
To be choked back, the wire ring 
Her frantic effort throttling : 
Piteous brown ball of quivering fears ! 

Ah soon in his large, hard hands she dies, 
And swings all loose to the swing of his walk. 
Yet calm and kindly are his eyes 
And ready to open in brown surprise 
Should I not answer to his talk 
Or should he my tears surmise. 

I hear his hand on the latch, and rise irom my chair 

Watching the door open : he flashes bare 

His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes 

In a smile like triumph upon me ; then careless- wise 

He flings the rabbit soft on the table board 

And comes towards me : ah, the uplifted sword 

Of his hand against my bosom, and oh, the broad 

Blade of his hand that raises my face to applaud 

His coming : he raises up my face to him 

And caresses my mouth with his fingers, smelling grim 



D. H. Of the rabbit's fur ! God, I am caught in a snare ! 

Lawrence I know not what fine wire is round my throat, 
I only know I let him finger there 
My pulse of life, letting him nose like a stoat 
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood : 
And down his mouth comes to my mouth, and down 
His dark bright eyes descend like a fiery hood 
Upon my mind: his mouth meets mine, and a flood 
Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown 
Within him, die, and find death good. 



iS8 



FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 



THE WIFE OF LLEW Francis 

Ledwidge 
And Gwydion said to Math, when it was Spring: 
" Come now and let us make a wife for Llew." 
And so they broke broad boughs yet moist with dew, 
And in a shadow made a magic ring : 
They took the violet and the meadow-sweet 
To form her pretty face, and for her feet 
They built a mound of daisies on a wing, 
And for her voice they made a linnet sing 
In the wide poppy blowing for her mouth. 
And over all they chanted twenty hours. 
And Llew came singing from the azure south 
And bore away his wife of birds and flowers. 



i6i 



Francis A RAINY DAY IN APRIL 

Ledwidge 

When the clouds shake their hyssops, and the rain 
Like holy water falls upon the plain, 
'Tis sweet to gaze upon the springing grain 
And see your harvest born. 

And sweet the little breeze of melody 
The blackbird puffs upon the budding tree, 
While the wild poppy lights upon the lea 
And blazes 'mid the corn. 

The skylark soars the freshening shower to hail, 
And the meek daisy holds aloft her pail, 
And Spring all radiant by the wayside pale 
Sets up her rock and reel. 

See how she weaves her mantle fold on fold, 
Hemming the woods and carpeting the wold. 
Her warp is of the green, her woof the gold, 
The spinning world her wheel. 



162 



THE LOST ONES Francis 

Ledwidge 
Somewhere is music from the linnets' bills, 
And thro' the sunny flowers the bee-Vv^ings drone, 
And white bells of convolvulus on hills 
Of quiet May make silent ringing, blown 
Hither and thither by the wind of showers, 
And somewhere all the wandering birds have flown; 
And the brown breath of Autumn chills the flowers. 

But where are all the loves of long ago? 
O little twilight ship blown up the tide. 
Where are the faces laughing in the glow 
Of morning years, the lost ones scattered vdde? 
Give me your hand, O brother, let us go 
Crying about the dark for those who died. 



163 



JOHN MASEFIELD 



THE * WANDERER.' John 

Masefield 
All day they loitered by the resting ships, 
Telling their beauties over, taking stock; 
At night the verdict left my messmates' lips, 

* The Wanderer is the finest ship in dock.' 

I had not seen her, but a friend, since drowned. 
Drew her, with painted ports, low, lovely, lean. 
Saying, ' The Wanderer, clipper, outward bound, 
The loveliest ship my eyes have ever seen — 

* Perhaps to-morrow you will see her sail. 
She sails at sunrise ' : but the morrow showed 
No Wanderer setting forth for me to hail; 

Far down the stream men pointed where she rode, 

Rode the great trackway to the sea, dim, dim. 
Already gone before the stars were gone. 
I saw her at the sea-line's smoky rim 
Grow swiftly vaguer as they towed her on. 

Soon even her masts were hidden in the haze 
Beyond the city; she was on her course 
To trample billows for a hundred days ; 
That afternoon the norther gathered force. 

Blowing a small snow from a point of east. 

* Oh, fair for her,' we said, ' to take her south.' 
And in our spirits, as the wind increased. 

We saw her there, beyond the river mouth. 

Setting her side-lights in the wildering dark. 
To glint upon mad water, while the gale 
Roared like a battle, snapping like a shark. 
And drunken seamen struggled with the sail; 

167 



John While with sick hearts her mates put out of mind 

Masefield Their Httle children left astern, ashore, 

And the gale's gathering made the darkness blind, 
Water and air one intermingled roar. 

Then we forgot her, for the fiddlers played, 
Dancing and singing held our merry crew; 
The old ship moaned a little as she swayed. 
It blew all night, oh, bitter hard it blew ! 

So that at midnight I was called on deck 
To keep an anchor-watch : I heard the sea 
Roar past in white procession filled with wreck; 
Intense bright frosty stars burned over me, 

And the Greek brig beside us dipped and dipped, 
White to the muzzle like a half-tide rock. 
Drowned to the mainmast with the seas she shipped; 
Her cable-swivels clanged at every shock. 

And like a never-dying force, the wind 
Roared till we shouted with it, roared until 
Its vast vitality of wrath was thinned. 
Had beat its fury breathless and was still. 

By dawn the gale had dwindled into flaw, 
A glorious morning followed : with my friend 
I climbed the fo'c's'le-head to see; we saw 
The waters hurrying shorewards without end. 

Haze blotted out the river's lowest reach; 
Out of the gloom the steamers, passing by. 
Called with their sirens, hooting their sea-speech; 
Out of the dimness others made reply. 

1 68 



And as we watched there came a rush of feet John 

Charging the fo'c's'le till the hatchway shook. Masefield 

Men all about us thrust their way, or beat, 
Crying, ' The Wanderer ! Down the river ! Look ! ' 

I looked with them towards the dimness ; there 
Gleamed like a spirit striding out of night 
A full-rigged ship unutterably fair, 
Her masts like trees in winter, frosty-bright. 

Foam trembled at her bows like wisps of wool; 
She trembled as she towed. I had not dreamed 
That work of man could be so beautiful. 
In its own presence and in what it seemed. 

' So she is putting back again,' I said. 

* How white with frost her yards are on the fore ! ' 
One of the men about me answer made, 

' That is not frost, but all her sails are tore, 

' Torn into tatters, youngster, in the gale; 
Her best foul-weather suit gone.' It was true. 
Her masts were white with rags of tattered sail 
Many as gannets when the fish are due. 

Beauty in desolation was her pride, 
Her crowned array a glory that had been ; 
She faltered tow'rds us like a swan that died, 
But although ruined she was still a queen. 

' Put back with all her sails gone,' went the word; 
Then, from her signals flying, rumour ran, 

* The sea that stove her boats in killed her third; 
She has been gutted and has lost a man.' 

169 



John So, as though stepping to a funeral march, 

Masefield She passed defeated homewards whence she came 
Ragged with tattered canvas white as starch, 
A wild bird that misfortune had made tame. 

She was refitted soon : another took 
The dead man's office; then the singers hove 
Her capstan till the snapping hawsers shook; 
Out, with a bubble at her bows, she drove. 

Again they towed her seawards, and again 

We, watching, praised her beauty, praised her trim, 

Saw her fair house-flag flutter at the main. 

And slowly saunter seawards, dwindling dim ; 

And wished her well, and wondered, as she died, 
How, when her canvas had been sheeted home. 
Her quivering length would sweep into her stride. 
Making the greenness milky with her foam. 

But when we rose next morning, we discerned 
Her beauty once again a shattered thing; 
Towing to dock the Wanderer returned, 
A wounded sea-bird with a broken wing, 

A spar was gone, her rigging's disarray 
Told of a worse disaster than the last; 
Like draggled hair dishevelled hung the stay. 
Drooping and beating on the broken mast. 

Half-mast upon her flagstaff" hung her flag; 
Word went among us how the broken spar 
Had gored her captain like an angry stag, 
And killed her mate a half-day from the bar. 

170 



She passed to dock upon the top of flood. John 

An old man near me shook his head and swore : Masefield 

' Like a bad woman, she has tasted blood — 
There'll be no trusting in her any more.' 

We thought it truth, and when we saw her there 
Lying in dock, beyond, across the stream. 
We would forget that we had called her fair, 
We thought her murderess and the past a dream. 

And when she sailed again we watched in awe. 
Wondering what bloody act her beauty planned. 
What evil lurked behind the thing we saw. 
What strength was there that thus annulled man's 
hand. 

How next its triumph would compel man's will 
Into compliance with external Fate, 
How next the powers would use her to work ill 
On suffering men ; we had not long to wait. 

For soon the outcry of derision rose, 
* Here comes the Wanderer ! ' the expected cry. 
Guessing the cause, our mockings joined with those 
Yelled from the shipping as they towed her by. 

She passed us close, her seamen paid no heed 
To what was called : they stood, a sullen group, 
Smoking and spitting, careless of her need, 
Mocking the orders given from the poop. 

Her mates and boys were working her; we stared. 
What was the reason of this strange return. 
This third annulling of the thing prepared? 
No outward evil could our eyes discern. 

171 



John Only like someone who has formed a plan 

Masefield Beyond the pitch of common minds, she sailed, 
Mocked and deserted by the common man, 
Made half divine to me for having failed. 

We learned the reason soon ; below the town 

A stay had parted like a snapping reed, 

* Warning,' the men thought, ' not to take her down.' 

They took the omen, they would not proceed. 

Days passed before another crew would sign. 
The Wanderer lay in dock alone, unmanned, 
Feared as a thing possessed by powers malign. 
Bound under curses not to leave the land. 

But under passing Time fear passes too ; 
That terror passed, the sailors' hearts grew bold. 
We learned in time that she had found a crew 
And was bound out and southwards as of old. 

And in contempt we thought, ' A Httle while 
Will bring her back again, dismantled, spoiled. 
It is herself; she cannot change her style ; 
She has the habit now of being foiled.' 

So when a ship appeared among the haze 

We thought, ' The Wanderer back again ' ; but no, 

No Wanderer showed for many, many days, 

Her passing lights made other waters glow. 

But we would often think and talk of her. 
Tell newer hands her story, wondering, then. 
Upon what ocean she was Wanderer, 
Bound to the cities built by foreign men. 

172 



And one by one our little conclave thinned, John 

Passed into ships, and sailed, and so away, Masefield 

To drown in some great roaring of the wind, 
Wanderers themselves, unhappy fortune's prey. 

And Time went by me making memory dim. 
Yet still I wondered if the Wanderer fared 
Still pointing to the unreached ocean's rim, 
Brightening the water where her breast was bared. 

And much in ports abroad I eyed the ships, 
Hoping to see her well-remembered form 
Come with a curl of bubbles at her lips 
Bright to her berth, the sovereign of the storm. 

I never did, and many years went by; 
Then, near a Southern port, one Christmas Eve, 
I watched a gale go roaring through the sky. 
Making the cauldrons of the clouds upheave. 

Then the wrack tattered and the stars appeared, 
Millions of stars that seemed to speak in fire; 
A byre-cock cried aloud that morning neared. 
The swinging wind- vane flashed upon the spire. 

And soon men looked upon a glittering earth, 
Intensely sparkling like a world new-born; 
Only to look was spiritual birth. 
So bright the raindrops ran along the thorn. 

So bright they were, that one could almost pass 
Beyond their twinkling to the source, and know 
The glory pushing in the blade of grass. 
That hidden soul which makes the flowers grow. 

173 



John That soul was there apparent, not revealed ; 

Masefield Unearthly meanings covered every tree ; 

That wet grass grew in an immortal field; 

Those waters fed some never-wrinkled sea. 

The scarlet berries in the hedge stood out 
Like revelations, but the tongue unknown; 
Even in the brooks a joy was quick; the trout 
Rushed in a dumbness dumb to me alone. 

All of the valley was aloud with brooks; 
I walked the morning, breasting up the fells. 
Taking again lost childhood from the rooks. 
Whose cawing came above the Christmas bells. 

I had not walked that glittering world before, 
But up the hill a prompting came to me, 
' This line of upland runs along the shore : 
Beyond the hedgerow I shall see the sea.' 

And on the instant from beyond away 

That long familiar sound, a ship's bell, broke 

The hush below me in the unseen bay. 

Old memories came : that inner prompting spoke. 

And bright above the hedge a seagull's wings 
Flashed and were steady upon empty air. 

* A Power unseen,' I cried, * prepares these things; 

* Those are her bells, the Wanderer is there.' 

So, hurrying to the hedge and looking down, 
I saw a mighty bay's wind-crinkled blue 
Ruffling the image of a tranquil town, 
With lapsing waters glittering as they grew. 



And near me in the road the shipping swung, John 

So stately and so still in such great peace Masefield 

That like to drooping crests their colours hung, 
Only their shadows trembled without cease. 

I did but glance upon those anchored ships. 
Even as my thought had told, I saw her plain ; 
Tense, like a supple athlete with lean hips. 
Swiftness at pause, the Wanderer come again — 

Come as of old a queen, untouched by Time, 
Resting the beauty that no seas could tire. 
Sparkling, as though the midnight's rain were rime, 
Like a man's thought transfigured into fire. 

And as I looked, one of her men began 
To sing some simple tune of Christmas Day; 
Among her crew the song spread, man to man. 
Until the singing rang across the bay; 

And soon in other anchored ships the men 
Joined in the singing with clear throats, until 
The farm-boy heard it up the windy glen. 
Above the noise of sheep-bells on the hill. 

Over the water came the lifted song — 
Blind pieces in a mighty game we swing; 
Life's battle is a conquest for the strong; 
The meaning shows in the defeated thing. 



175 



HAROLD MONRO 



MILK FOR THE CAT. Harold 

Monro 
When the tea is brought at five o'clock, 
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care, 
The little black cat with bright green eyes 
Is suddenly purring there. 

At first she pretends, having nothing to do, 
She has come in merely to blink by the grate, 
But, though tea may be late or the milk may be sour, 
She is never late. 

And presently her agate eyes 
Take a soft large milky haze, 
And her independent casual glance 
Becomes a stiff, hard gaze. 

Then she stamps her claws or lifts her ears, 
Or twists her tail and begins to stir, 
Till suddenly all her lithe body becomes 
One breathing, trembHng purr. 

The children eat and wriggle and laugh ; 
The two old ladies stroke their silk : 
But the cat is grown small and thin with desire, 
Transformed to a creeping lust for milk. 

The white saucer like some full moon descends 
At last from the clouds of the table above ; 
She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows, 
Transfigured with love. 

She nestles over the shining rim. 
Buries her chin in the creamy sea; 
Her tail hangs loose ; each drowsy paw 
Is doubled under each bending knee. 

179 



Harold A long, dim ecstasy holds her life ; 

Monro Her world is an infinite shapeless white, 

Till her tongue has curled the last holy drop. 
Then she sinks back into the night, 

Draws and dips her body to heap 

Her sleepy nerves in the great arm-chair, 

Lies defeated and buried deep 

Three or four hours unconscious there. 



1 80 



OVERHEARD ON A SALTMARSH. Harold 

Monro 
Nymph, nymph, what are your beads? 

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them? 

Give them me. 

No. 

Give them me. Give them me. 

No. 

Then I will howl all night in the reeds, 
Lie in the mud and howl for them. 

Goblin, why do you love them so? 

They are better than stars or water. 
Better than voices of winds that sing, 
Better than any man's fair daughter. 
Your green glass beads on a silver ring. 

Hush, I stole them out of the moon. 

Give me your beads, I want them. 

No. 

I will howl in a deep lagoon 

For your green glass beads, I love them so. 

Give them me. Give them. 

No. 



i8i 



Harold CHILDREN OF LOVE. 

Monro 

The holy boy 

Went from his mother out in the cool of the day 
Over the sun-parched fields 

And in among the olives shining green and shining 
grey. 

There w^as no sound, 

No smallest voice of any shivering stream. 
Poor sinless little boy, 

He desired to play and to sing; he could only sigh 
and dream. 

Suddenly came 

Running along to him naked, with curly hair, 
That rogue of the lovely world, 
That other beautiful child whom the virgin Venus 
bare. 

The holy boy 

Gazed with those sad blue eyes that all men know. 

Impudent Cupid stood 

Panting, holding an arrow and pointing his bow. 

(Will you not play? 

Jesus, run to him, run to him, swift for our joy. 
Is he not holy, like you ? 

Are you afraid of his arrows, O beautiful dreaming 
boy?) 

And now they stand 

Watching one another with timid gaze ; 

Youth has met youth in the wood. 

But holiness will not change its melancholy ways. 

182 



Cupid at last Harold 

Draws his bow and softly lets fly a dart. Monro 

Smile for a moment, sad world ! — 
It has grazed the white skin and drawn blood from 
the sorrowful heart. 

Now, for delight, 

Cupid tosses his locks and goes wantonly near; 
But the child that was born to the cross 
Has let fall on his cheek, for the sadness of life, 
a compassionate tear. 

Marvellous dream ! 

Cupid has offered his arrows for Jesus to try; 
He has offered his bow for the game. 
But Jesus went weeping away, and left him there 
wondering why. 



183 



JAMES STEPHENS 



THE RIVALS. James 

Stephens 
I heard a bird at dawn 

Singing sweetly on a tree, 
That the dew was on the lawn, 
And the wind was on the lea; 
But I didn't listen to him, 
For he didn't sing to me. 

I didn't listen to him, 

For he didn't sing to me 
That the dew was on the lawn 

And the wind was on the lea ; 
I was singing at the time 

Just as prettily as he. 

I was singing all the time. 

Just as prettily as he, 
About the dew upon the lawn 

And the wind upon the lea ; 
So I didn't listen to him 

And he sang upon a tree. 



187 



James THE GOAT PATHS 

Stephens 

The crooked paths go every way 
Upon the hill — they wind about 
Through the heather in and out 

Of the quiet sunniness. 

And there the goats, day after day, 
Stray in sunny quietness. 

Cropping here and cropping there, 
As they pause and turn and pass. 

Now a bit of heather spray. 
Now a mouthful of the grass. 

In the deeper sunniness, 

In the place where nothing stirs. 

Quietly in quietness, 

In the quiet of the furze, 

For a time they come and lie 

Staring on the roving sky. 

If you approach they run away. 

They leap and stare, away they bound, 
With a sudden angry sound. 

To the sunny quietude; 

Crouching down where nothing stirs 
In the silence of the furze. 

Couching down again to brood 

In the sunny solitude. 

If I were as wise as they 

I would stray apart and brood, 
I would beat a hidden way 
Through the quiet heather spray 
To a sunny solitude; 

i88 



And should you come I'd run away, James 

I would make an angry sound, Stephens 

I would stare and turn and bound 
To the deeper quietude, 

To the place where nothing stirs 

In the silence of the furze. 

In that airy quietness 

I would think as long as they; 
Through the quiet sunniness 

I would stray away to brood 
By a hidden beaten way 

In a sunny solitude. 

I would think until I found 

Something I can never find, 
Something lying on the ground, 

In the bottom of my mind. 



189 



James THE SNARE 

Stephens To A. E. 

I hear a sudden cry of pain ! 

There is a rabbit in a snare : 
Now I hear the cry again, 

But I cannot tell from where. 

But I cannot tell from where 
He is calling out for aid; 

Crying on the frightened air, 
Making everything afraid. 

Making everything afraid, 
Wrinkling up his little face. 

As he cries again for aid; 
And I cannot find the place! 

And I cannot find the place 
Where his paw is in the snare ; 

Little one ! Oh, little one ! 
I am searching everywhere. 



190 



IN WOODS AND MEADOWS James 

Stephens 
Play to the tender stops, though cheerily: 

Gently, my soul, my song : let no one hear : 
Sing to thyself alone; thine ecstasy 

Rising in silence to the inward ear 
That is attuned to silence : do not tell 

A friend, a bird, a star, lest they should say — 
He danced in woods and meadows all the day^ 
Waving his arms, and cried as eveningjell, 

' O, do not come^ and cried, ' O, come, thou queen. 
And walk with me unwatched upon the green 
Under the sky. ^ 



191 



James DEIRDRE 

Stephens 

Do not let any woman read this verse; 

It is for men, and after them their sons 

And their sons' sons. 

The time comes when our hearts sink utterly; 
When we remember Deirdre and her tale, 
And that her lips are dust. 

Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand; 
They looked into her eyes and said their say, 
And she repHed to them. 

More than a thousand years it is since she 
Was beautiful : she trod the waving grass ; 
She saw the clouds. 

A thousand years ! The grass is still the same, 
The clouds as lovely as they were that time 
When Deirdre was alive. 

But there has never been a woman born 
Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful 
Of all the women born. 

Let all men go apart and mourn together; 
No man can ever love her; not a man 
Can ever be her lover. 

No man can bend before her : no man say — 
What could one say to her? There are no words 
That one could say to her ! 

Now she is but a story that is told 
Beside the fire! No man can ever be 
The friend of that poor queen. 

192 



LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 



THE END OF THE WORLD Lascelles 

Aber- 
PERSONS crombie 

HUFF, the Farmer. 
SOLLERS, the Wainwright. 
MERRICK, the Smith. 
VINE, the Publican. 
SHALE, the Labourer, 
A DOWSER. 
MRS HUFF. 
WARP, the Molecatcher 
Men and Women oj the Village. 

ACT I 

Scene: A public-house kitchen. HUFF the Farmer and 
SOLLERS the Wainwright talking; another 
man, a stranger, sitting silent. 

Huf 

Ay, you may think we're well off — 

Sollers Now for croaks ! 

Old toad! who's trodden on you now? — Go on; 
But if you can, croak us a new tune. 

H,iff ' Ay, 

You think you're well off — and don't grab my words 
Before they're spoken — but some folks, I've heard, 
Pity us, living quiet in the valley. 

Sollers 

Well, I suppose 'tis their affair. 

Huff Is it? 

But what I mean to say, — if they think small 

195 



Lascelles Of us that live in the valley, mayn't it show 

Aber- That we aren't all so happy as we think? 

crombie MERRICK the Smith comes in. 

Merrick 

Quick, cider! I beheve I've swallowed a coal. 

Boilers 

Good evening. True, the heat's a wonder to- 
night. \_Smith draws himself cider. 

Huff 

Haven't you brought your flute? We've all got 

room 
For music in our minds to-night, I'll swear. 
Working all day in the sun do seem to push 
The thought out of your brain. 

Sollers O, 'tis the sun 

Has trodden on you? That's what makes you 

croak? 
Ay, whistle him somewhat: put a tune in his 

brain ; 
He'll else croak us out of pleasure with drinking. 

Merrick 

'Tis quenching, I beheve. — A tune? Too hot. 
You want a fiddler. 



Huff Nay, I want your flute. 

I like a piping sound, not scraping o' guts. 

Merrick 

This is no weather for a man to play 
Flutes or music at^all that asks him spend 

196 



His breath and spittle : you want both yourself Lascelles 
These oven days. Wait till a fiddler comes. Aber- 

crombie 
Huff Who ever comes down here? 

Sollers There's someone come. 

[Pointing with his pipe to the stranger. 

Merrick 

Good evening, mister. Are you a man for tunes.? 

Stranger 

And if I was I'ld give you none to-night. 

Merrick 

Well, no offence : there's no offence, I hope, 
In taking a dummy for a tuneful man. 
Is it for can't or won't you are? 

Stranger 

You wouldn't, if you carried in your mind 
What I've been carrying all day. 

Sollers What's that? 

Stranger 

You wait ; you'll know about it soon ; O yes, 
Soon enough it will find you out and rouse you. 

Huf 

Now ain't that just the way we go down here ? 
Here in the valley we're like dogs in a yard. 
Chained to our kennels and wall'd in all round. 
And not a sound of the world jumps over our hills. 
And when there comes a passenger among us, 

197 



Lascelles 

Aber- 

crombie 



One who has heard what's stirring out beyond, 
'Tis a grutchy mumchance fellow in the dismals ! 

Stranger 

News, is it, you want ? I could give you news ! — 
I wonder, did you ever hate to feel 
The earth so fine and splendid? 

Huff Oh, you're one 

Has stood in the brunt of the world's wickedness, 
Like me? But listen, and I'll give you a tale 
Of wicked things done in this little valley, 
Done against me, will surely make you think 
The Devil here fetcht up his masterpiece. 

Sollers 

Ah, but it's hot enough without you talking 
Your old hell fire about that pair of sinners. 
Leave them alone and drink. 



One of these days. 



I'll smell them grilling 



Merrick But there'll be nought to drink 

When that begins! Best keep your skin full now. 



Stranger 

What do I care for wickedness? Let those 
Who've played with dirt, and thought the game 

was bold. 
Make much of it while they can: there's a big 

thing 
Coming down to us, ay, well on its road, 
WiU make their ploys seem mighty piddling sport. 

198 



Huff Lascelles 

This is a fool; or else it's what I think, — Aber- 

The world now breeds such crowd that they've no crombie 

room 
For well-grown sins : they hatch 'em small as flies. 
But you stay here, out of the world awhile. 
Here where a man's mind, and a woman's mind. 
Can fling out large in wickedness : you'll see 
Something monstrous here, something dreadful. 

Stranger 

I've seen enough of that. Though it was only 
Fancying made me see it, it was enough : 
I've seen the folk of the world yelling aghast, 
Scurrying to hide themselves. I want nought else 
Monstrous and dreadful. — 

Merrick What had roused 'em so? 

Some house afire? 

Huff A huzzy flogged to death 

For her hard-faced adultery? 

Stranger {too intent to hear them) 

Oh to think of it ! 
Talk, do, chatter some nonsense, else I'll think : 
And then I'm feeling like a grub that crawls 
All abroad in a dusty road ; and high 
Above me, and shaking the ground beneath me, 

come 
Wheels of a thundering wain, right where I'm 
plodding. 

S oilers Queer thinking, that. 

199 



Lascelles Stranger And here's a queerer thing. 

Aber- I have a sort of lust in me, pushing me still 

crombie Into that terrible way of thinking, like 

Black men in India lie them down and long 
To feel their holy wagon crack their spines. 

Merrick 

Do you mean beetles? I've driven over scores, 
They sprawling on their backs, or standing mazed. 
I never knew they liked it. 

Sollers He means frogs. 

I know what's in his mind. When I was young 
My mother would catch us frogs and set them 

down, 
Lapt in a screw of paper, in the ruts. 
And carts going by would quash 'em; and I'ld 

laugh. 
And yet be thinking, * Suppose it was myself 
Twisted stiff in huge paper, and wheels 
Big as the wall of a barn treading me flat ! ' 



I know what's in his mind : just madness it is. 
He's lookt too hard at his fellows in the world ; 
Sight of their monstrous hearts, like devils 

cages. 
Has jolted all the gearing of his wits. 
It needs a tough brain, ay, a brain like mine, 
To pore on ugly sin and not go mad. 

Stranger 

Madness ! You're not far out. — I came up here 
To be alone and quiet in my thoughts, 
Alone in my own dreadful mind. The path, 

200 



m 



Of red sand trodden hard, went up between 
High hedges overgrown of hawthorn blowing 
White as clouds; ay it seemed burrowed through 
A white sweet-smelling cloud, — I walking there 
Small as a hare that runs its tunnelled drove 
Thro* the close heather. And beside my feet 
Blue greygles drifted gleaming over the grass ; 
And up I climbed to sunlight green in birches, 
And the path turned to daisies among grass 
With bonfires of the broom beside, like flame 
Of burning straw: and I lookt into your valley. 
I could scarce look. 
Anger was smarting in my eyes like grit. 

the fine earth and fine all for nothing! 
Mazed I walkt, seeing and smelling and hearing: 
The meadow lands all shining fearfully gold, — 
Cruel as fire the sight of them toucht my mind; 
Breathing was all a honey taste of clover 

And bean flowers : I would have rather had it 
Carrion, or the stink of smouldering brimstone. 
And larks aloft, the happy piping fools. 
And squealing swifts that slid on hissing wings, 
And yellowhammers playing spry in hedges : 

1 never noted them before; but now — 
Yes, I was mad, and crying mad, to see 
The earth so fine, fine all for nothing! 



Lascelles 

Aber- 
crombie 



Sollers (spits) 

Pst ! yellowhammers ! He talks gentry talk. 
That's worse than being mad. 



Stranger 

I tell you, you'll be feeling them to-morn 
And hating them to be so wonderful. 



201 



Lascelles Merrick 

Aber- Let's have some sense. Where do you live? 

crombie 

Stranger Nowhere. 

I'm always travelling. 

Huff Why, what's your trade ? 

Stranger A dowser. 

Huff You're the man for me ! 

Stranger Not I. 

Hujff 

Ho, this is better than a fiddler now ! 

One of those fellows who have nerves so clever 

That they can feel the waters of underground 

Tingling in their fingers? 

You find me a spring in my high grazing-field, 

I'll give you what I save in trundling water. 

Stranger 

I find you water now! — No, but I'll find you 
Fire and fear and unbelievable death. 

VINE the Publican comes in. 

Vine 
Are ye all served? Ay, seems so; what's your 
score ? 

Merrick Two ciders. 

Hujf Three. 

202 



Sollers And two for me. Lascelles 

Aber- 
Vine {to Dowser) And you? crombie 

Dowser Naught. I was waiting on you. 

Vine Will you drink ? 

Dowser 

Ay ! Drink ! what else is left for a man to do 
Who knows what I know? 

Vine Good. What is't you know? 

You tell it out and set my trade a-buzzing. 

Sollers 

He's queer. Give him his mug and ease his tongue. 

Vine 

I had to swill the pigs : else I'd been here ; 

But we've the old fashion in this house; you draw, 

I keep the score. Well, what's the worry on you ? 

Sollers Oh he's in love. 

Dowser You fleering grinning louts, 

I'll give it you now; now have it in your faces ! 

Sollers Crimini, he's going to fight ! 

Dowser 

You try and fight with the thing that's on my 
side! 

Merrick A ranter! 

203 



Lascelles Huff A boozy one then. 

Aber- 

crombie Dowser Open yon door; 

'Tis dark enough by now. Open it, you. 

Vine 
Hold on. Have you got something fierce outside? 

Merrick A Russian bear? 

Sollers Dowsers can play strange games. 

Huff No tricks ! 

Dowser This is a trick to rouse the world. 

[He opens the door. 
Look out! Between the elms! There's my fierce 
thing. 

Merrick 

He means the star with the tail like a feather of 
fire. 

Sollers. Comet, it's called. 

Hujff Doyoumean the comet, mister? 

Dowser What do you tliink of it ? 

Hujff Pretty enough. 

But I saw a man loose off a rocket once; 
It made more stir and flare of itself; though yon 
Does better at steady burning. 

204 



Dowser Stir and flare ! Lascelles 

You'll soon forget your rocket. Aber- 



crombie 



Merrick Tell you what 

I thought last night, now, going home. Says I, 
'Tis just like the look of a tadpole : if I saw 
A tadpole silver as a dace that swam 
Upside-down towards me through black water, 
rid see the plain spit of that star and his tail. 

Sollers 
And how does your thought go? 

Dowser It's what I know ! — 

A tadpole and a rocket ! — My dear God, 
And I can still laugh out ! — What do you think 
Your tadpole's made of? What lets your rocket 

fling 
Those streaming sparks across the half of night, 
Splashing the burning spray of its haste among 
The quiet business of the other stars? 
Ay, that's a fiery jet it leaves behind 
In such enormous drift ! What sort of fire 
Is spouted so, spouted and never quenching? — 
There is no name for that star's fire : it is 
The fire that was before the world was made, 
The fire that all the things we live among 
Remember being; and whitest fire we know 
Is its poor copy in their dreaming trance ! 

That would be hell fire. 

Dowser Ay, if you like, heU fire, 

HeU fire flying through the night ! 'Twould be 

205 



Lascelles A thing to blink about, a blast of it 

Aber- Swept in your face, eh? and a thing to set 

crombie The whole stuff of the earth smoking rarely ? 

Which of you said * the heat's a wonder to-night'? 
You have not done with marvelhng. There'll come 
A night when all your clothes are a pickle of sweat, 
And, for all that, the sweat on your salty skin 
Shall dry and crack, in the breathing of a wind 
That's like a draught come through an open'd 

furnace. 
The leafage of the trees shall brown and faint, 
All sappy growth turning to brittle rubbish 
As the near heat of the star strokes the green 

earth; 
And time shall brush the fields as visibly 
As a rough hand brushes against the nap 
Of gleaming cloth — killing the season's colour, 
Each hour charged with the wasting of a year; 
And sailors panting on their warping decks 
Will watch the sea steam like broth about them. 
You'll know what I know then ! — That towering 

star 
Hangs like a fiery buzzard in the night 
Intent over our earth — Ay, now his journey 
Points, straight as a plummet's drop, down to us ! 

HuJ[ Why, that's the end of the world \ 

Dowser You've said it now. 

Sellers What, soon? In a day or two? 

Merrick You can't mean that ! 

Fine 

End of the World ! Well now, I never thought 
206 



To hear the news of that. If you've the truth Lascelles 

In what you say, likely this is an evening Aber- 

That we'll be talking over often and often. crombie 

* How was it, Sellers ? ' I'll say; * or you, Merrick, 
Do you mind clearly how he lookt? ' — And 

then — 

* " End of the world " he said, and drank — like 

that, 
Solemn ! ' — And right he was : he had it all 
As sure as I have when my sow's to farrow. 

Dowser 

Are you making a joke of me? Keep your mind 
For tippling while you can. 

Vine Was that a joke? 

I'm always bad at seeing 'era, even my own. 

Dowser 
A fool's! 'Twill cheer you when the earth blows 

Like as it were all gunpowder. 

Vine You mean 

The star will butt his burning head against us? 
'Twill knock the world to flinders, I suppose? 

Dowser 

Ay, or with that wild, monstrous tail of his 
Smash down upon the air, and make it bounce 
Like water under the flukes of a harpooned whale, 
And thrash it to a poisonous fire; and we 
And all the life of the world drowned in blazing ! 

207 



Lascelles Vine 

Aber- 'Twill be a handsome sight. If my old wife 

crombie Were with me now ! This would have suited her. 

* I do like things to happen ! ' she would say; 
Never shindy enough for her ; and now 
She's gone, and can't be seeing this ! 

Dowser You poor fool. 

How will it be a sight to you, when your eyes 
Are scorcht to little cinders in your head? 

Vine 

Whether or no, there must be folks outside 
Willing to know of this. I'll scatter your news. 

[He goes. 
[A short pause: then SOLLERS breaks out. 

Sollers 

No, no; it wouldn't do for me at all; 

Nor for you neither, Merrick.? End of the World? 

Bogy! A parson's tale or a bairn's ! 



Merrick That's it. 

Your trade's a gift, easy as playing tunes. 
But SoUers here and I, we've had to drill 
Sinew and muscle into their hard lesson. 
Until they work in timber and glowing iron 
As kindly as I pick up my pint : your work 
Grows in your nature, like plain speech in a child, 
But we have learnt to think in a foreign tongue; 
And something must come out of all our skill '. 
We shan't go sliding down as gHb as you 
Into notions of the End of the World. 

208 



Sollers Lascelles 

Give me a tree, you may say, and give me steel, Aber- 
And I'll put forth my shapely mind ; I'll make, crombie 
Out of my head like telling a well-known tale, 
A wain that goes as comely on the roads 
As a ship saihng, the lines of it true as gospel. 
Have I learnt that all for nothing? — O no! 
End of the World? It wouldn't do at all. 
No more making of wains, after I've spent 
My time in getting the right skill in my hands? 

Dowser 

Ay, you begin to feel it now, I think; 
But you complain like boys for a game spoilt : 
Shaping your carts, forging your iron ! But Life, 
Life, the mother who lets her children play 
So seriously busy, trade and craft, — 
Life with her skiU of a million years' perfection 
To make her heart's delighted glorying 
Of sunlight, and of clouds about the moon. 
Spring lighting her daffodils, and corn 
Ripening gold to ruddy, and giant seas. 
And mountains sitting in their purple clothes — 
O life I am thinking of, life the wonder, 
AU blotcht out by a brutal thrust of fire 
Like a midge that a clumsy thumb squashes and 
smears. 

Hujf 

Let me but see the show beginning, though ! 
You'ld mind me then ! O I would like you all 
To watch how I should figure, when the star 
Brandishes over the whole air its flame 
Of thundering fire; and naught but yellow rubbish 
Parcht on the perishing ground, and there are 
tongues 

209 



Lascelles Chapt with thirst, glad to lap stinking ponds, 

Aber- And pale glaring faces spying about 

crombie On the earth withering, terror the only speech ! 

Look for me then, and see me stand alone 
Easy and pleasant in the midst of it all. 
Did you not make your merry scoff of me? 
Was it your talk, that when yon shameless pair 
Threw their wantoning in my face like dirt, 
I had no heart against them but to grumble? 
You would be saying that, I know ! But now, 
Now I believe it's time for you to see 
My patient heart at last taking its wages. 

Sollers 

Pull up, man! Screw the brake on your running 

tongue. 
Else it will rattle you down the tumbling way 
This fellow's gone. 

Merrick And one man's enough 

With brain quagged axle-deep in crazy mire. 
We won't have you beside him in his puddles, 
And calling out with him on the End of the 

World 
To heave you out with a vengeance. 

Huff What you want ! 

Have I not borne enough to make me know 
I must be righted sometime? — And what else 
Would break the hardy sin in them, which lets 
Their souls parade so daring and so tall 
Under God's hate and mine? What else could pay 
For all my wrong but a blow of blazing anger 
Striking down to shiver the earth, and change 
Their strutting wickedness to horror and crying? 

210 



Merrick Lascelles 

Be quiet, Huff! If you mean to believe Aber- 

This dowser's stuff, and join him in his bedlam, crombie 
By God, you'll have to reckon with my fist. 

SHALE comes in. HUFF glares at him speechless^ 

hut with wrath evidently working. 

Shale 

Where's the joker? You, is it? Here's hot news 
You've brought us ; all the valley's hissing aloud, 
And makes as much of you falling into it 
As a pail of water would of a glowing coal. 

Sollers 

Don't you start burbHng too. Shale, 

Shale That's the word! 

Burbling, simmering, ay and bumpy-boiling : 
All the women are mobbed together close 
Under the witan-trees, and their full minds 
Boil like so many pans slung on a fire. 
Why, starlings trooping in a copse in fall 
Could make no scandal like it. 

Merrick What is it, man ? 

Shale 

End of the World! The flying star! End of the 
World! 

Sollers They don't believe it though? 

Shale What ? the whole place 

Has gone just randy over it ! 

211 



Lascelles Merrick 
Aber- 



crombie 



Hold your noise ! 
Sollers I shall be daft if this goes on. 



Shale A7,so? 

The End of the World's been here? You look as 

though 
You'd startled lately. And there's the virtuous 

man! 
How would End of the World suit our good Huff, 
Our old crab-verjuice Huff? 

HUFF (seizing the DOWSER and bringing him up 
in front of SHALE) 

Look at him there ! 
This is the man I told you of when you 
Were talking small of sin. You made it out, 
Did you, a fool's mere nasty game, like dogs 
That snuggle in muck, and grin and roll them- 
selves 
With snorting pleasure? Ah, but you are wrong. 
'Tis something that goes thrusting dreadfully 
Its wilful bravery of evil against 
The worth and right of goodness in the world: 
Ay, do you see how his face still brags at me? 
And long it has been, the time he's had to walk 
Lording about me with his wickedness. 
Do you know what he dared? I had a wife, 
A flighty pretty linnet-headed girl. 
But mine : he practised on her with his eyes ; 
He knew of luring glances, and she went 
After his calling lust : and all since then 
They've Hved together, fleering in my face, 
Pleased in sight of the windows of my house 
With doing wrong, and making my disgrace. 

212 



O but wait here with me ; wait till your news Lascelles 

Is not to be mistaken, for the way Aber- 

The earth buckles and singes like hot boards : crombie 

You'll surely see how dreadful sin can be 
Then, when you mark these two running about, 
With raging fear for what they did against me 
Buzzing close to their souls, stinging their hearts, 
And they like scampering beasts when clegs are 

fierce, 
Or flinging themselves low as the ground to 

writhe. 
Their arms hugging their desperate heads. And 

then 
You'll see what 'tis to be an upright man, 
Who keeps a patient anger for his wrongs 
Thinking of judgment coming — you mil see that 
When you mark how my looks hunt these wret- 
ches. 
And smile upon their groans and posturing 

anguish. 
O watch how calm I'll be, when the blazing air 
Judges their wickedness; you watch me then 
Looking delighted, like a nobleman 
Who sees his horse winning an easy race. 

Merrick 

You fool, Huff, you believe it now ! 

Huff You fool, 

Merrick, how should I not believe a thing 
That calls aloud on my mind and spirit, and they 
Answer to it like starving conquering soldiers 
Told to break out and loot? 

Shale You vile old wasp ! 

213 



Lascelles Sollers 

Aber- We've talkt enough : let's all go home and sleep ; 

crombie There might be a fiend in the air about us, one 

Who pours his will into our minds to see 
How we can frighten one another. 

Huff A fiend! 

Shale will soon have the flapping wings of a 

fiend, 
And flaming wings, beating about his head. 
There'll be no air for Shale, very soon now. 
But the breathing of a fiend: the star's coming! 
The star that breathes a horrible fury of fire 
Like glaring fog into the empty night ; 
And in the gust of its wrath the world will soon 
Shrivel and spin like paper in a furnace. 
I knew they both would have to pay me at last 
With sight of their damned souls for all my 
wrong ! 

Shale Somebody stop his gab. 

Merrick {seizing the DOWSER and shaking him) 

Is it the truth? 
Is it the truth we're in the way of the star? 

Sollers 

O let us go home ; let us go home and sleep ! 

A crowd oj men and women hurst in and shout con 
jusedly. 

1. Look out for the star! 

2. 'Tis moving, moving. 

3. Grows as you stare at it. 

4. Bigger than ever. 

214 



1. Down it comes with a diving pounce, Lascelles 
As though it had lookt for us and at last found us. Aber- 

2. O so near and coming so quick ! crombie 

3. xA.nd how the burning hairs of its tail 
Do seem surely to quiver for speed. 

4. We saw its great tail twitch behind it. 
^Tis come so near, so gleaming near. 

1 . The tail is wagging ! 

2. Come out and see! 

3. The star is wagging its tail and eyeing us — 

4. Like a cat huncht to leap on a bird. 

Merrick 

Out of my way and let me see for myself. 

[They all begin to hustle out: 
HUFF speaks in midst oj the turmoil, 

Hujff 

Ay, now begins the just man's reward; 

And hatred of the evil thing 

Now is to be satisfied. 

Wrong ventured out against me and braved : 

And I'll be glad to see all breathing pleasure 

Burn as foolishly to naught 

As a moth in candle flame. 

If I but have my will to watch over those 

Who injured me bawling hoarse heartless fear. 

They are all gone but HUFF, SHALE and the 
DOWSER, 

Shale 

As for you, let you and the women make 
Your howling scare of this; I'll stand and laugh. 
But if it truly were the End of the World, 
rid be the man to face it out, not you : 

215 



Lascelles I who have let Hfe go delighted through me, 

Aber- Not you, who've sulkt away your chance of life 

crombie In mumping about being paid for goodness. 

[Going, 

Hujf {after him) 
You wait, you wait ! 

[He follows the rest. 

Dowser (alone) Naught but a plague of flies ! 

I cannot do with noises, and light fools 
Terrified round me; I must go out and think 
Where there is quiet and no one near. O, think! 
Life that has done such wonders with its think 

ing, 
And never daunted in imagining; 
That has put on the sun and the shining night, 
The flowering of the earth and tides of the sea, 
And irresistible rage of fate itself. 
All these as garments for its spirit's journey — 

now this life, in the brute chance of things, 
Murder'd, uselessly murder'd ! And naught else 
For ever but senseless rounds of hurrying motion 
That cannot glory in itself. O no ! 

1 will not think of that; I'll blind my brain 
With fancying the splendours of destruction; 
When like a burr in the star's fiery mane 
The crackling earth is caught and rusht along. 
The forests on the mountains blazing so. 
That from the rocks of ore beneath them come 
White-hot rivers of smelted metal pouring 
Across the plains to roar into the sea. . . . 

The curtain is lowered for ajezv moments only. 
216 



Act II Lascelles 

Aber- 
As before, a little while ajter. "The room is empty zvhen crombie 
the curtain goes up. SOLLERS runs in and paces 
about, hut stops short zvhen he catches sight oj a 
pot dog on the mantelpiece. 



Sollers 



The pace it is coming down! — What to do now? — 

My brain has stopt : it's-Hke a clock that's fallen 

Out of a window and broke all its cogs. — 

Where's that old cider, Vine would have us pay 

Twopence a glass for? Let's try how it smells : 

Old Foxwhelp, and a humming stingo it is ! 

(To the pot dog) 

Hullo, you ! What are you grinning at ? — 

I know ! 

There'll be no score against me for this drink! 

O that score ! I've drunk it down for a week 

With every gulp of cider, and every gulp 

Was half the beauty it should have been, the score 

So scratcht my swallowing throat, like a wasp in 

the drink ! 
And I need never have heeded it ! — 
Old grinning dog! You've seen me happy here; 
And now, all's done ! But do you know this too, 
That I can break you now, and never called 
To pay for you ? [Throzving the dog on the floor, 

I shall be savage soon ! 
We're leaving all this ! — O, and it was so pleasant 

Here, in here, of an evening. Smash! 

[He sweeps a lot oj crockery on to the floor. 
It's all no good! Let's make a wreck of it all! 

[Picking up a chair and szvinging it. 
Damn me ! Now I'm forgetting to drink, and soon 

217 



Lascelles 'Twill be too late. WTiere's there a mug not 

Aber- shivered: 

crombie |-^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ j^i^^^ij ^-^^^^ MERRICK 

rushes in. 

Merrick 

You at the barrels too? Out of the road ! 

[He 'pushes SOLLERS away and spills his fnug. 

Sollers 

Go and kick out of doors, you black donkey. 

Merrick 

Let me come at the vessel, will you? 

[They wrestle savagely. 

Sollers Keep off; 

I'm the first here. Lap what you've spilt of mine. 

Merrick 

You with your chiselling and screw-driving, 
Your wooden work, you bidding me, the man 
Who hammers a meaning into red hot iron? 

VINE comes in slowly. He is weeping; the two 
wrestlers stop and stare at him, as he sits 
down, and holds his head in his hands, 
sobbing. 

Fine O this is a cruel affair ! 

Sollers Here's Vine crying ! 

Fine I've seen the moon. 
218 



Merrick The moon? 'Tisn't the moon Lascelles 

That's tumbling on us, but yon raging star. Aber- 

What notion now is clotted in your head? crombie 

Fine 

I've seen the moon; it has nigh broke my heart. 

Sollers 

Not the moon too jumping out of her ways? 

Fine 

No, no ; — but going quietly and shining, 

Pushing away a flimsy gentle cloud 

That would drift smoky round her, fending it off 

With steady rounds of blue and yellow light. 

It was not much to see. She was no more 

Than a curved bit of silver rind. But I 

Never before so noted her — 



Sollers What he said, 

The dowser ! 

Merrick Ay, about his yellowhammers. 

Sollers 

And there's a kind of stifle in the air 
Already! 

Merrick It seems to me, my breathing goes 
All hot down my windpipe, hot as cider 
Mulled and steaming travels down my swallow. 

Sollers 

And a queer racing through my ears of blood. 

219 



Lascelles Merrick 

Aber- I wonder, is the star come closer still ? 

crombie 

Sollers 

O, close, I know, and viciously heading down. 



Fine 

She was so silver! and the sun had left 

A kind of tawny red, a dust of fine 

Thin light upon the blue where she was lying, — 

Just a curled paring of the moon, amid 

The faint grey cloud that set the gleaming wheel 

Around the tilted slip of shining silver. 

it did seem to me so safe and homely, 
The moon quietly going about the earth; 
It's a rare place we have to live in, here; 
And life is such a comfortable thing 

And what's the sense of it all? Naught but to make 
Cruel as may be the slaughtering of it. 

[He breaks dow7i again. 

Sollers It beats my mind ! 

[He begins to walk up and down desperately, 

Merrick 'Twas bound to come sometime, 

Bound to come, I suppose. 'Tis a poor thing 
For us, to fall plumb in the chance of it ; 
But, now or another time, 'twas bound to be. — 

1 have been thinking back. When I was a lad 
I was delighted with my life : there seemed 
Naught but things to enjoy. Say we were bathing : 
There'ld be the cool smell of the water, and cool 
The splashing under the trees : but I did loathe 
The sinking mud slithering round my feet, 

And I did love to loathe it so ! And then 

220 



We'ld troop to kill a wasp's nest ; and for sure Lascelles 

I would be stung; and if I liked the dusk Aber- 

And singing and the game of it all, I loved crombie 

The smart of the stings, and fleeing the buzzing 

furies. 
And sometimes I'ld be looking at myself 
Making so much of everything; there'ld seem 
A part of me speaking about myself: 
* You know, this is much more than being happy. 
'Tis hunger of some power in you, that lives 
On your heart's welcome for all sorts of luck, 
But always looks beyond you for its meaning.' 
And that's the way the world's kept going on, 
Lbelieve now. Misery and delight 
Have both had liking welcome from it, both 
Have made the world keen to be glad and sorry. 
For why? It felt the living power thrive 
The more it made everything, good and bad. 
Its own belonging, forged to its own affair, — 
The living power that would do wonders some 

day. 
I don!t know if you take me? 

Sollers I do, fine ; 

I've felt the very thought go through my mind 
When I was at my wains; though 'twas a thing 
Of such a flight I could not read its colour. — 
Why was I like a man sworn to a thing 
W^orking to have my wains in every curve. 
Ay, every tenon, right and as they should be? 
Not for myself, not even for those wains : 
But to keep in me living at its best 
The skill that must go forward and shape the 

world. 
Helping it on to make some masterpiece. 

221 



Lascelles Merrick 

Aber- And never was there aught to come of it ! 

crombie The world was always looking to use its life 

In some great handsome way at last. And now — 

We are just fooled. There never was any good 

In the world going on or being at all. 

The fine things life has plotted to do are worth 

A rotten toadstool kickt to flying bits. 

End of the World? Ay, and the end of a joke. 

Vine Well, Huff's the man for this turn. 



Merrick Ay, the good man ! 

He could but grunt when times were pleasant ; now 
There's misery enough to make him trumpet. 
And yet, by God, he shan't come blowing his horn 
Over my misery! 

We are just fooled, did I say? — We fooled our- 
selves, 
Looking for worth in what was still to come; 
And now there's a stop to our innings. Well, 

that's fair : 
I've been a living man, and might have been 
Nothing at all! I've had the world about me, 
And felt it as my own concern. What else 
Should I be crying for? I've had my turn. 
The world may be for the sake of naught at last. 
But it has been for my sake : I've had that. 

[He sits again, and broods. 

Sailers 

I can't stay here. I must be w^here my sight 
May silence with its business all my thinking — 
Though it will be the star plunged down so close 
It puffs its flaming vengeance in my face. 

[He goes, 

222 



Vine Lascelles 

I wish there were someone who had done me Aber- 

wrong, crombie 

Like HufFwith his wife and Shale ; I wish there were 
Somebody I would like to see go crazed 
With staring fright. Fid have my pleasure then 
Of living on into the End of the World. 
But there is no one at all for me, no one 
Now my poor wife is gone. 

Merrick Why, what did she 

To harm you? 

Vine Didn't she marry me ? — It's true 

She made it come all right. She died at last. 

Besides, it would be wasting wishes on her. 

To be in hopes of her weeping at this. 

She'ld have her hands on her hips and her 
tongue jumping 

As nimble as a stoat, delighting round 

The way the world's to be terrible and tor- 
mented. — 

Ay, but I'll have a thing to tell her now 

When she begins to ask the news ! I'll say 

' You've misst such a show as never was nor will 
be, 

A roaring great affair of death and ruin ; 

And I was there — the world smasht to sparkles ! ' 

O, I can see her vext at that 1 

MERRICK has been sunk in thought 
during this, but VINE seems to brighten 
at his notion, and speaks quite cheerjully 
to HUFF, who now comes in, looking 
mopish, and sits down. 

223 



Lascelles Vine 

Aber- We've all been envying you, Huff. You're well off, 

crombie You with your goodness and your enemies 

Showing you how to relish it with their terror. 

When do you mean the gibing is to start? 

Hu^ There's time enough. 

Vine O, do they still hold out ? 

If they should be for spiting you to the last ! 
You'ld best keep on at them : think out a list 
Of frantic things for them to do, w^hen air 
Is scorching smother and the sin they did 
Frightens their hearts. You'll shout them into fear, 
I undertake, if you find breath enough. 

Hujff 

You have the breath. What's all your pester for? 
You leave me be. 



Vine Why, you're to do for me 

What I can't do myself. — And yet it's hard 
To make out where Shale hurt you. What's the 

sum 
Of all he did to you? Got you quit of marriage 
Without the upset of a funeral. 

HuJ 

Why need you blurt your rambling mind at me? 
Let me bide quiet in my thought awhile, 
And it's a little while w^e have for thought. 

Merrick 

I know your thought. Paddling round and 
around, 

224 



Like a squirrel working in a spinning cage Lascelles 

With his neck stretcht to have his chin poke up, Aber- 
And silly feet busy and always going ; crombie 

Paddling round the story of your good life, 
Your small good life, and how the decent men 
Have jeered at your wry antic. 

Huff My good life! 

And what good has my goodness been to me? 
You show me that I Somebody show me that ! 
A caterpillar munching a cabbage-heart, 
.Always drudging further and further from 
The sounds and lights of the world, never abroad 
Nor flying free in warmth and air sweet-smelling : 
A crawling caterpillar, eating his life 
In a deaf dark — that's my gain of goodness ! 
And it's too late to hatch out now! — 
I can but fancy what I might have been ; 
I scarce know how to sin ! — But I believe 
A long while back I did come near to it. 

Merrick 

Well done ! — O but I should have guesst all this ! 

Hujff 

I Vv^as in Droitwich; and the sight of the place 
Is where they cook the brine : a long dark shed. 
Hot as an oven, full of a grey steam 
And ruddy light that leaks out of the furnace; 
And stirring the troughs, ladling the brine that 

boils 
As thick as treacle, a double standing row, 
Women — boldly talking in wicked jokes 
All day long. I went to see 'em. It was 
A wonderful rousing sight. Not one of them 

225 



Lascelles Was really wearing clothes : half of a sack 

Aber- Pinned in an apron was enough for most, 

crombie And here and there might be a petticoat ; 

But nothing in the way of bodices. — 
O, they knew words to shame a carter's face ! 

Merrick 

This is the thought you would be quiet in ! 



Huf 



Where else can I be quiet? Now there's an end 
Of daring, 'tis the one place my life has made 
Where I may try to dare in thought. I mind. 
When I stood in the midst of those bare women, 
All at once, outburst with a rising buzz, 
A mob of flying thoughts was wild in me : 
Things I might do swarmed in my brain pell- 
mell. 
Like a heap of flies kickt into humming cloud. 
I beat them down; and now I cannot tell 
For certain what they were. I can call up 
Naught venturesome and darting like their style ; 
Very tame braveries now 1 — O Shale's the man 
To smile upon the End of the World; 'tis Shale 
Has lived the bold stifl" fashion, and filled himself 
With thinking pride in what a man may do. — 
I wish I had seen those women more than once ! 



Vine 



Well, here's an upside down ! This is old Huff! 
What have you been in your heart all these years? 
The man you w^ere or the new man you are? 



Huff Just a dead flesh ! 
226 



Merrick Nay, HufF the good man at least Lascelles 

Was something alive, though snarling like trapt Aber- 

vermin. crombie 

But this? What's this for the figure of a man? 
'Tis a boy's smutty picture on a wall. 

"«£ . 

I was alive, was I? Like a blind bird 

That flies and cannot see the flight it takes, 

Feeling it with mere rowing of its wings. 

But Shale — he's had a stirring sense of what he is. 

Shouting outside. Then SOLLERS walks in 
again, very quiet and steady. He stands 
in the middde, looking down on the floor. 

Vine What do they holla for there ? 

Sollers The earth. 

Merrick The earth ? 

Sollers The earth's afire. 

Hufl The earth blazing already? 

[Shouts again, 
O, not so soon as this? 

Fine What sort of a fire? 

Sollers 

The earth has caught the heat of the star, you fool. 

Merrick 

I know: there's come some dazzle in your eyes 
From facing to the star; a lamp would do it. 

227 



Lascelles Htiff 

Aber- It will be that. Your sight, being so strained, 

crombie Is flashing of itself. 

Sollers Say what you like. 

There's a red flare out of the land beyond 
Looking over the hills into our valley. 
The thing's begun, ' tis certain. Go and see. 

Vine I won't see that. I will stay here. 

Sollers Ay, creep 

Into your oven. You'll be cooler there. — 
O my God, we'll all be coals in an hour! 

[Shouts again. 

And I have naught to stand in my heart upright, 
And vow it made my living time worth more 
Than if my time had been death in a grave ! 
Several persons run i?i. 

The Crowd 

1. The river's the place! 

2. The only safe place now ! 

3. Best all charge down to the river ! 

4. For there's a blaze, 
A travelling blaze comes racing along the earth. 

Sollers 

'Tis true. The air's red-hot above the hills. 

The Crowd 

1. Ay, but the burning now crests the hill-tops 
In quiver of yellow flame. 

2. And a great smoke 
Waving and tumbling upward. 

228 



3. The river now! Lascelles 

4 . The only place we have, not to be roasted ! Aber- 

crombie 

Merrick 

And what will make us water-rats or otters, 
To keep our breath still living through a dive 
That lasts until the earth's burnt out? Or how 
Would that trick serve, when we stand up to gasp, 
xA.nd find the star waiting for our plunged heads 
To knock them into pummy? 

Vine Scarce more dazed 

rid be with that than now. I shall be bound. 
When I'm to give my wife the tale of it all, 
To be devising: more of this to-do 
My mind won't carry. 

Huff O ashamed I am. 

Ashamed! — It needn't have been downright 

feats. 
Such as the braving men, the like of Shale, 
Do easily, and smile, keeping them up. 
If I could look back to one manful hour 
Of romping in the face of all my goodness! — 

SHALE comes in, dragging Mrs HUFF by the hand. 

Shale 

Huff! Where's Huff? — Huff, you must take her 

back! 
You'll take her back? She's yours : I give her up. 



Merrick Belike here's something bold again. 



229 



Lascelles Mrs. Huf {to SHALE) Once more, 

Aber- Listen. 

crombie 

Shale I will not listen. There's no time 

For aught but giving you back where you belong; 
And that's with you, Huff. Take her. 

Huff Here is depth 

I cannot see to. Is it your last fling? — 
The dolt I am in these things ! — What's this way 
You've found of living wickedly to the end.? 

Shale 

Scorn as you please, but take her back, man, take 
her. 

HuJ 

But she's my wife! Take her back now? \Vhat for? 

Mrs Huff 

WTiat for? Have you not known of thieves that 

throw 
Their robbery down, soon as they hear a step 
Sounding behind them on the road, and run 
A long way off, and pull an honest face? 
Ay, see Shale's eyes practising baby-looks! 
He never stole, not he ! 

Shale Don't hear her talk. 

MrsHujff 

But he was a talker once ! Love was the thing; 
And love, he swore, would make the wrong go 

right. 
And Huff was a kind of devil — and that's true 

230 



Huf Lascelles 

What? Fve been devilish and never knew? Aber- 

crombie 
Mrs Huff 

The devil in the world that hates all love. 
But Shale said, he'd the love in him would hold 
If the world's frame and the fate of men were 
crackt. 

Shale What I said! 

Whoever thought the world was going to crack? 

Mrs Hu-ff 

And now he hears someone move behind him. — 
They'll say, perhaps, ' You stole this ! ' — Down it 

goes. 
Thrown to the dirty road — thrown to Huff! 

Shale 

Yes, to the owner. 

Mrs Huff It was not such brave thieving. 

You did not take me from my owner, Shale : 
There's an old robber will do that some day. 
Not you. 

Vine Were you thinking of me then, missis ? 

Mrs Hujff {still to SHALE) 

You found me lost in the dirt : I was with Huff. 

You lifted me from there ; and there again, 

Like a frightened urchin, you're for throwing me. 

Shale Let it be that ! I'm firm 

Not to have you about me, when the thing. 



Lascelles Whatever it is, that's standing now behind 

Aber- The burning of the world, comes out on us. 

crombie 

The way men cheat ! This windle-stalk was he 
Would hold a show of spirit for the world 
To study while it ruined ! — Make what you please 
Of your short wrangle here, but leave me out. 
I have my thoughts — O far enough from this. 

[Turning away. 

Shale {seizing him) 

You shall not put me off. I tell you, Huff, 
You are to take her back now. 



Hu£ Take her back ! 

And what has she to do with what I want? 



Shale 

Isn't she yours? I must be quit of her; 
I'll not be in the risk of keeping her. 
She's yours ! 

Huff And what's the good of her now to me? 
What's the good of a woman whom I've married? 

During this, WARP the mole catcher has come in. 

Warp 

Shale and Huff at their old pother again! 

Merrick The molecatcher! 
232 



Sollerf Warp, have you travelled far? Lascelle 

Is it through frenzy and ghastly crovi^ds you've Aber- 
come? crombie 

Fine 
Have you got dreadful things to tell us, Warp ? 

Warp Why, no. 
But seemingly you'ld have had news for me. 
If I'd come later. Is Huff to murder Shale, 
Or Shale for murdering Huff? One way or 

'tother, 
'Tis time 'twas settled surely. — Mrs Huff, 
They're neither of them worth you : here's your 
health. 

[Draws and drmks» 

Hujff 

Where have you been? Are you not new from folk 
That throng together in a pelting horror? 

Warp 

Do you think the whole land hearkens to the flurry 
Of an old dog biting at a young dog's throat? 

Merrick 

No, no! Not their shrill yapping; you've not 

heard 
The world's near to be blasted? 

Warp No mutter of it. 

I am from walking the whole ground I trap. 
And there's no likeness of it, but the moles 
I've turned up dead and dried out of three 
counties. 

233 



Lascelles Sollers 

Aber- Why, but the lire that's eating the whole earth ; 

crombie The breath of it is scarlet in the sky ! 

You must have seen that? 

Warp But what's taken you ? 

You are like boys that go to hunt for ghosts, 
And turn the scuttle of rats to a roused demon 
Crawling to shut the door of the barn they search. 
Fire? Yes, fire is playing a pretty game 
Yonder, and has its golden fun to itself, 
Seemingly. 

Sollers You don't know what 'tis that burns? 

Warp 

Call me a mole and not a molecatcher 
If I do not. It is a rick that burns ; 
And a strange thing I'll count it if the rick 
Be not old Huff's. 

Sollers That flare a fired stack? 

Huff 

Only one of my ricks ahght? O Glory! 
There may be chance for me yet. 

Merrick Best take the train 

To Droitwich, Huff. 

Vi7ie {at the door) It would be like a stack. 
But for thest.Qf. 

Sollers (to WARP) Yes, as you're so clever. 

You can talk down maybe yon brandishing star! 

234 



fFarp Lascelles 

O, 'tis the star has flickt your brains? Indeed, Aber- 

The tail swings long enough to-night for that. crombie 
Well, look your best at it; 'tis off again 
To go its rounds, they tell me, from now on ; 
And the next time it swaggers in our sky. 
The moles a long while will have tired themselves 
Of having their easy joke wdth me. 

[.^ pause. 

Merrick You mean 

The flight of the star is from us ? 

Sollers But the world, 

The whole world reckons on it battering us ! 

Warp 

Who told you that? 

Sollers A dowser. 

Merrick Where's he gone ? 

Warp 

A dowser ! say a tramping conjurer. 

You'll believe aught, if you believe a dowser. 

Sollers 

I had it in me to be doubting him. 

Merrick 

The noise you made was like that ! But I knew 
You'ld laugh at me, so sure you were the world 
Would shiver like a bursting grindlestone : 
Else Pld have said oat loud, 'twas a fool's whimsy. 

235 



Lascelles Vine 

Aber- Where are you now? What am I now to think? 

crombie Your minds run round in puzzles, hke chased 

hares. 
I cannot sight them. 

Merrick Think of going to bed. 

Sollers And dreaming prices for your pigs. 

Merrick O Warp, 

You should have seen Vine crying ! The moon, he 

said, 
The silver moon ! Just like an onion 'twas 
To stir the water in his eyes. 

Sollers He's left 

A puddle of his tears where he was droopt 
Over the table. 

Vine There's to be no ruin ? — 

But what's the word of a molecatcher, to crow 
So ringing over a dowser's word? 

Warp I'll tell you. 

These dowsers live on lies : my trade's the truth. 
I can read moles, and the way they've dug their 

journeys, 
Where you'ld not see a wrinkle. 

Vine And he knows 

The buried water. 

Warp There's always buried water. 

If you prod deep enough. A dowser finds 

236 



Because the whole earth's floating, Hke a raft. Lasceiles 

What does he know ? A twitching in his thews ; Aber- 
A dog asleep knows that much. What I know crombie 

I've learnt, and if I'd learnt it wrong, I'ld starve. 
And if I'm right about the grubbing moles, 
Won't I be right for news of walking men? 

Merrick 

Of course you're right. Let's put the whole thing 
by, 

And have a pleasant drink. 

Shale {to Mrs. HUFF) You must be tired 

With all this story. Shall we be off for home? 

Hujff 

You brass! You don't go now^ with her! She's 

mine : 
You gave her up. 

Shale And you made nothing of her. 

{Jo Mrs Huff) Come on. 

Mrs Huff Warp, will you do a thing for me ? 

Warp A hundred things. 

Mrs Huff Then slap me these cur-dogs. 

Warp 

I will. Where will I slap them, and which first ? 

Mrs, Hujff 

Maybe 'twill do if you but laugh at them. 

237 



Lascelles Warp 

Aber- I'll try for that ; but they are not good jokes ; 

crombie Though there's a kind of monkey-look about them. 

Mrs Huff 

They thinking Pld be near one or the other 

After this night ! Will I be made no more 

Than clay that children puddle to their minds, 

Moulding it what they fancy? — Shale was brave : 

He made a bogy and defied it, till 

He frightened of his work and ran away. 

But Huff! — Huff was for modelling wickedly. 

Huff Wlio told you that ? 

Mrs Huff I need no one's telling. 

I was your wife once. Don't I know your good- 
ness? 
A stupid heart gone sour with jealousy, 
To feel its blood too dull and thick for sinning. — 
Yes, Huff would figure a wicked thought, but had 
No notion how, and flung the clay aside, — 
O they were gaudy colours both ! But now 
Fear has bleacht their swagger and left them 

blank. 
Fear of a loon that cried. End of the World! 

Huff Shale, do you know what we're to do? 

Skale rid like 

To have the handling of that dowser-man. 

Hujff Just that, my lad, just that ! 

Warp And your fired rick ? 

238 



Huff Lascelles 

Let it be blazes ! Quick, Shale, after him ! Aber- 

V\\ tramp the night out, but I'll take the rogue. crombie 

Shale {to the others) 

You wait, and see us haul him by the ears, 

And swim the blatherer in Huff's farm-yard pond. 

[As HUFF mid SHALE go out, they see the 
comet hejore them. 

Huff The devil's own star is that ! 

Shale 

And floats as calm 
As a pike basking. 

Hujj There shouldn't be such stars ! 

Shale 

Neither such dowsers, and we'll learn him that. 

\Tlhey go ojff together. 

Sollers Why, the star's dwindhng now, surely ! 

Merrick O, small 

And dull now to the glowing size it was. 

Vine 

But is it certain there'll be nothing smasht.? 
Not even a house knockt roaring down in 
crumbles.? 

And I did think, I'ld open my wife's mouth 

With envy of the dreadful things I'd seen! 

Curtain. 

239 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

{These lists y which include poetical works only, are in 
some cases incomplete^ 



LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 

• Interludes and Poems. John Lane. i< 

Mary and the Bramble. {Out oj print.) 

The Author. 1910 

The Sale of St Thomas. {Out oJ print.) „ „ 191 1 

'Emblems of Love. John Lane. 191 2 

''Dehoidih. {three act play). „ ,. 191 2 

Contributions to New Numbers. {Out oJ print.) 

Published at Ryton, Dymock, Glos. 19 14 

GORDON BOTTOMLEY 

The Crier by Night {one act play). 

{Out oJ print.) Unicorn Press. 1902 
Midsummer Eve {one act pastoral). 

Peartree Press. 1905 
The Riding to Lithend (o«^^r/_^/^3;). „ „ 1909 
The Gate of Smaragdus. Elkin Mathews. 1904 

Chambers of Imagery (i^/r// 5m^-f). „ 1907 

Chambers of Imagery (5^foW »Sm^i). „ 1912 

' A Vision of Giorgione. 

T. B. Mosher (Portland, Maine, U.S.A.). 1910 
Collected Plays {in preparation). Constable. 19 16 

RUPERT BROOKE 

Poems. Sidgwick and Jackson. 191 1 

. 1914, and Other Poems. „ „ 1915 

Contributions to New Numbers. {Out oj print.) 1914 

241 



WILLIAM H. DAVIES 




The Soul's Destroyer.] 


Alston Rivers. 1906 


New Poems. 


Elkin Mathews. 1907 


Nature Poems. 


A. C. Fifield. 1908 


Farewell to Poesy.^J 

Songs of Joy. 

Foliage. 

The Bird of Paradise. 


„ 1910 

„ 1911 

Elkin Mathews. 191 3 

Methuen. 1914 


WALTER DE LA MARE 




Songs of Childhood. (0«^o/^n«^.) Longmans. 1902 
Poems. Murray. 1906 
The Listeners. Constable. 191 2 


^ A Child's Day. 
Peacock Pie. 


1912 
1913 


JOHN DRINKWATER 




Poems of Men and Hours. 


David Nutt. 191 1 


Cophetua {one act play). 
Poems of Love and Earth. 


» 1911 
» 1912 


Cromwell, and Other Poems. 


„ 1913 


Rebellion {play). „ „ 1914 
Contributions to Ne-w Numbers. {Out of print.) 19 14 


The Storm {one act play). 


The Author. 19 15 


Swords and Ploughshares. 

Sidg\?\ 


rick and Jackson. 1915 



JAMES ELROY FLECKER 

Forty-two Poems. Dent. 191 1 

The Golden Journey to Samarkand. Goschen. 191 3 

Reprinted by Martin Seeker. 191 5 

The Old Ships. Poetry Bookshop. 191 5 



2*2 



WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 

T^ ., T) 1 1 London: Elkin Mathews. IQ I o 

Daily Bread. -^^^^ York: Macmillan. 

Fires. „ „ 191 2 

Borderlands. „ ,, 1914 

Thoroughfares. „ „ 1914 

Contributions to New Numbers. {Out of priori.) 1914 
' Battle. Elkin Mathews. 191 5 

RALPH HODGSON 

' Eve. Flying Fame. 191 3 

'The Bull. „ „ 191 3 

^ The Mystery. „ „ 191 3 

The Song of Honour. (0«^ o/^r/Vf/.) ,, „ 1913 

Seven Broadsides. (Decorated by Lovat Eraser.) 

Flying Fame. 191 3 
All the above re-issued by The Poetry Bookshop. 19 14 

D. H. LAWRENCE 

t Love Poems, and Others. Duckworth. 191 3 

FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 

'Songs of the Fields. Herbert Jenkins. 191 5 

JOHN MASEFIELD 

-Salt Water Ballads. Grant Richards. 1902 

Ballads. {Out of print.) Elkin Mathews. 1903 

Ballads and Poems. „ „ 1910 

' The Everlasting Mercy. Sidgwick and Jackson. 191 1 

'The Widow in the Bye Street. „ „ 1912 

The Daffodil Fields. Heinemann. 191 3 

i Dauber. „ 191 3 

, Philip the King. „ 1914 

243 



HAROLD MONRO 

Judas. 

Before Dawn. 
Children of Love. 

JAMES STEPHENS 

Insurrections. 
/ The Hill of Vision. 
' Songs from the Chy. 

Adventures of Seumas Beg. 



Sampson Low. 1908 

Constable. 191 1 

Poetry Bookshop. 19 14 



Maunsel. 1909 

Macmillan. 191 5 
1915 



244 



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